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DOING 





IRELAN 





MARGARET 
SKINNIDER 



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DOING MY BIT 
FOR IRELAND 




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►oY^ 



MARGARET SKINNIDER 

School-teacher, suffrafrist, nationalist: 
wounded while lighting in the uniform of 
the Irish Volunteers 



DOING MY BIT 
FOR IRELAND 



BY 

MARGARET SKINNIDER 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1917 



.56 



Copyright, 1917, by 
The Century Co. 

Published, June, 19 12 



JUN 15 1917 

©-I.A470006 



INTRODUCTION 

When the revolt of a people that feels 
itself oppressed is successful, it is writ- 
ten down in history as a revolution — as 
in this country in 1776. When it fails, 
it is called an insurrection — as in Ire- 
land in 1 91 6. Those who conquer usu- 
ally write the history of the conquest. 
For that reason the story of the "Dublin 
Insurrection" may become legendary in 
Ireland, where it passes from mouth to 
mouth, and may remain quite unknown 
throughout the rest of the world, unless 
those of us who were in it and yet es- 
caped execution, imprisonment, or de- 
portation, write truthfully of our per- 
sonal part in the rising of Easter week. 

It was in my awn right name that I 



vi INTRODUCTION 

applied for a passport to come to this 
country. When it was granted me 
after a long delay, I wondered if, after 
all, the English authorities had known 
nothing of my activity in the rising. 
But that can hardly be, for it was a Gov- 
ernment detective who came to arrest 
me at the hospital in Dublin where I 
was recovering from wounds received 
during the fighting. 

I was not allowed to stay in prison; 
the surgeon in charge of the hospital in- 
sisted to the authorities at Dublin Castle 
that I was in no condition to be locked 
up in a cell. But later they might have 
arrested me, for I was in Dublin twice 
— once in August and again in Novem- 
ber. On both occasions detectives were 
following me. I have heard that three 
days after I openly left my home in 
Glasgow to come to this country, in- 
quiries were made for me of my family 
and friends. 



INTRODUCTION vii 

That there is some risk in publishing 
my story, I am well aware; but that is 
the sort of risk which we who love Ire- 
land must run, if we are to bring to the 
knowledge of the world the truth of that 
heroic attempt last spring to free Ire- 
land and win for her a place as a small 
but independent nation, entitled to the 
respect of all who love liberty. It is to 
win that respect, even though we failed 
to gain our freedom, that I tell what I 
know of the rising. 

I find that here in America it is hard 
to imagine a successful Irish revolt, but 
there was more than a fighting chance 
for us as our plans were laid. Ireland 
can easily be defended by the population 
once they are aroused, for the country 
is well suited to guerilla warfare, and 
the mountains near the coast form a 
natural defense from attack by sea. 
Nor do the people have to go outside for 
their food. They could easily live for 



viii INTRODUCTION 

years in the interior on what the soil is 
capable of producing. And there is 
plenty of ammunition in Ireland, too. 
If we had been able to take the British 
as completely off guard in the country 
districts as we did in Dublin — had there 
not been the delay of a day in carrying 
out concerted action — we could have 
seized all the arms and ammunition of 
the British arsenals on the island. 

To-day it would be harder, for the 
British are not likely to be again caught 
unaware of our plans. Besides, they 
are taking precautions. Drilling of any 
sort is forbidden; foot-ball games are 
not allowed; all excursions are prohib- 
ited. The people are not allowed to 
come together in numbers on any occa- 
sion. 

For a long time after the rising, I 
dreamed every night about it. The 
dream was not as it actually took 
place, for the streets were different 



INTRODUCTION ix 

and the strategic plans changed, while 
the outcome was always successful. 
My awakening was a bitter disappoint- 
ment, yet the memory of our failure is 
a greater memory than many of us ever 
dared to hope. 

In all the literature of the Celtic re- 
vival through which Ireland has gained 
fresh recognition from the world, there 
is no finer passage nor one that can 
mean so much to us, than that para- 
graph of the last proclamation which 
Padraic Pearse wrote in the ruined 
Dublin post-office when under shell and 
shrapnel fire. At a moment when he 
knew that the rising had been defeated, 
that the end of his supreme attempt had 
come, he wrote : 

'Tor four days they (the men) 
have fought and toiled, almost without 
cessation, almost without sleep; and in 
the intervals of fighting, they have sung 
songs of the freedom of Ireland. No 



X INTRODUCTION 

man has complained, no man has asked 
'why ?'. Each individual has spent him- 
self, happy to pour out his strength for 
Ireland and for freedom. If they do 
not win this fight, they will at least have 
deserved to win it. But win it they will, 
although they may win it in death. Al- 
ready they have won a great thing. 
They have redeemed Dublin from many 
shames, and made her name splendid 
among the names of cities." 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Margaret Skinnider . . Frontispiece'^ 

The Irish Cross Presented to the 
Author 2- 

Constance Gore-Booth, Countess de 
Markievicz .... . . 7 

Margaret Skinnider wearing Boy's 
Clothes 21' 

A Fianna Boy 53^' 

James Connolly 93"^ 

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic 107 

Belt Buckle i35 

Stamps issued by the Irish Republic . 135- 

Pearse's Last Proclamation . . -151' 

The Order that made the Surrender of 
the College of Surgeons Inevitable . 160^ 

The Pass Out of Ireland . . . .196 



DOING MY BIT FOR 
IRELAND 




THE IRISH CROSS PRESENTED TO THE 
AUTHOR 

The inscription reads : " The Cumman-na-mBan 
and Irish Volunteers, Glasgow, present this to Mar- 
garet Skinnider for the work she did for Ireland, 
Easter Week, 1916." 



DOING MY BIT FOR 
IRELAND 



JUST before Christmas a year ago, I 
accepted an invitation to visit some 
friends in the north of Ireland, where, 
as a little girl, I had spent many mid- 
summer vacations. My father and 
mother are Irish, but have lived almost 
all their lives in Scotland and much of 
that time in Glasgow. Scotland is my 
home, but Ireland my country. 

On those vacation visits to County 
Monaghan, Ulster, I had come to know 
the beauty of the inland country, for I 
stayed nine miles from the town of 
Monaghan. We used to go there in a 
3 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

jaunting-car and on the way passed the 
fine places of the rich English people — 
the "Planter" people we called them be- 
cause they were of the stock that Crom- 
well brought over from England and 
planted on Irish soil. We would pass, 
too, the small and poor homes of the 
Irish, with their wee bit of ground. 
It was then I began to feel resentment, 
though I was only a child. 

In Scotland there were no such con- 
trasts for me to see, but there were the 
histories of Ireland, — not those the 
English have written but those read by 
all the young Irish to-day after they 
finish studying the Anglicized histories 
used in the schools. I did it the other 
way about, for I was not more than 
twelve when a boy friend loaned me a 
big thick book, printed in very small 
type, an Irish history of Ireland. 
Later I read the school histories and 
4 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the resentment I had felt in County 
Monaghan grew hotter. 

Then there were the old poems which 
we all learned. My favorite was, "The 
Jackets Green," the song of a young 
girl whose lover died for Ireland in 
the time of William III. The red coat 
and the green jacket! All the differ- 
ences between the British and Irish 
lay in the contrast between those two 
colors. William III, too! Up to his 
reign the Irish army had been a reality ; 
Ireland had had a population of nine 
millions. To-day there are only four 
millions of Irish in Ireland, a country 
that could easily support five times that 
number in ease and comfort. The his- 
tory of my country after the time of 
William III seemed to me to be a his- 
tory of oppression which we should tell 
with tears if we did not tell it with 
anger. 

S 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

But I believed the time was at hand 
to do something'. We all believed that ; 
. foi an English war is always the signal 
for an Irish rising. Ever since this 
war began, I had been hearing of vague 
plans. In Glasgow I belonged to the 
Irish Volunteers and to the Cumman- 
na-mBan, an organization of Irish girls 
and women. I had learned to shoot in 
one of the rifle practice clubs which the 
British organized so that women could 
help in the defense of the Empire. 
These clubs had sprung up like mush- 
rooms and died as quickly, but I kept on 
till I was a good marksman. I believed 
the opportunity would soon come to de- 
fend my own country. And now I was 
going over at Christmas to learn what 
hope there was of a rising in the spring. 
After all, I did not go to the quiet 
hills of Monaghan, but to Dublin at the 
invitation of the most patriotic and rev- 
6 




CONSTANCE GOllK-UOOTH, COUNTESS 1)E MARKIEVICZ 

One (if the leaders of the rising. (Her death sentence was com- 
muted to life imprisonment) 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

olutionary woman in all Ireland. Con- 
stance Gore-Booth, who by her mar- 
riage with a member of the Polish 
nobility became the Countess Mar- 
kievicz, had heard of my work in the 
Cumman-na-mBan and wanted to talk 
with me. She knew where all the men 
and women who loved Ireland were 
working, and sooner or later met them 
all, in spite of the fact that she was of 
Planter stock and by birth of the Eng- 
lish nobility in Ireland. 

It was at night that I crossed the 
Irish Sea. All other passengers went 
to their state-rooms, but I stayed on 
deck. Leaning back in a steamer- 
chair, with my hat for a pillow, I 
dropped asleep. That I ever awakened 
was a miracle. In my hat I was carry- 
ing to Ireland detonators for bombs, 
and the wires were wrapped around me 
under my coat. That was why I had 
9 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

not wanted to go to a state-room where 
I might run into a hot-water pipe or an 
electric wire that would set them off. 
But pressure, they told me when I 
reached Dublin, is just as dangerous, 
and my head had been resting heavily 
on them all night! 

It is hard now to think of that hos- 
pitable house in Leinster Road with all 
the life gone out of it and its mistress in 
an English prison. Every one coming 
to Dublin who was interested in plays, 
painting, the Gaelic language, suf- 
frage, labor, or Irish Nationalism, vis- 
ited there. The Countess Markievicz 
kept ''open house" not only for her 
friends, but for her friends' friends. 
As one of them has written: ''Until she 
came down to breakfast in the morning, 
she never loiew what guests she had 
under her roof. In order not to dis- 

lO 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

turb her, they often climbed in through 
the window late at night." 

The place was full of books; you 
could not walk about without stumbling 
over them. There were times, too, 
when the house looked like the ward- 
robe in a theater. You would meet 
people coming down-stairs in all man- 
ner of costume for their part in plays 
the count wrote and "Madam" — as we 
called her — acted with the help of who- 
ever were her guests. These theatrical 
costumes were sometimes used for plays 
put on at the Abbey Theater, near by. 
They served, too, as disguises for suf- 
fragettes or labor leaders wanted by the 
police. The house was always watched 
whenever there was any sort of agita- 
tion in Dublin. 

I remember hearing of one labor 
leader whom the police hoped to arrest 
before he could address a mass-meet- 
II 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ing. He was known to visit Madam, 
so the plainclothes men made for Surrey 
House at once. When they arrived 
they found a fancy-dress ball going on 
to welcome the count back from Po- 
land. All windows were lighted, music 
for dancing could be heard, and guests 
in carriages and motors were arriving. 
This was no likely haunt for a labor 
agitator, so they went away. But cau- 
tion brought them back the next morn- 
ing, for rumor still had it that their man 
was hiding there. They waited about 
the house all that morning and after- 
noon. Many persons came and went, 
among them an old man who walked 
with difficulty and leaned upon the arm 
of a young woman. The police paid no 
more attention to him than to the others, 
but it was the labor leader in one of the 
disguises from the theatrical wardrobe. 
He made his speech that night sur- 

12 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

rounded by such a crowd of loyal de- 
fenders that he could not be arrested. 
During the Transport Workers' 
strike in 19 13, Madam threw open her 
house as a place of refuge where 
strikers were sure to find something to 
eat or a spot to sleep, if only on the 
drawing-room floor. In addition, she 
sold her jewels to obtain money to es- 
tablish soup-kitchens for their families. 
Her energy and courage always led her 
where the conflict was hottest. I do 
not think she knew what it was to be 
afraid, once she decided upon a course 
of action. Although belonging to the 
most privileged class in Ireland by birth 
and education, as a little girl she had 
thrown herself into the Irish cause. 
She and her sister Eva used to go to the 
stables, take horses without permission, 
and ride at a mad pace to the big meet- 
ings. There they would hear the great 
13 



^ 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Parnell or the eloquent Michael Davitt 
tell the story of the wrongs done to Ire- 
land, and urge upon their hearers great 
courage and self-sacrifice that these 
wrongs might be righted. If all those 
at such meetings had heeded the 
speakers' words as did this little 
daughter of Lady Gore-Booth ; had they 
surrendered themselves as completely 
as she did, I verily believe we would to- 
day be far along the road toward a free 
Ireland. 

As a child all the villagers on her 
father's estate loved Madam, for they 
felt her sincerity. When she was sent 
away to school or went to Paris to study 
painting, for which she had marked 
talent, they missed her. It was while 
she was in Paris that she met and mar- 
ried another artist, a member of the 
Polish nobility. Poland and Ireland! 
Two countries which have had their 
14 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

great history and their great humil- 
iation now have their hope of free- 
dom! 

Neither the count nor countess 
were willing to permanently give up 
their country of birth, so they decided 
to live part of the time in Dublin and 
part of the time on his estates near 
Warsaw. It was while Madam was in 
Poland that she learned some of the fine 
old Polish airs to which she later put 
words for the Irish. Upon her return 
to Ireland she was at last expected to 
take her place as a social leader in the 
Dublin Castle set. Instead, she went 
more ardently than ever into all the dif- 
ferent movements that were working 
towards the freedom of Ireland. 

About this time Baden-Powell was 

organizing his British Boy Scouts in 

Ireland. He was so much impressed 

with the success Padraic Pearse was 

15 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

having with Irish boys that he asked 
him to help him in the Boy Scout move- 
ment. Pearse did not care to make po- 
tential British soldiers out of Irish boys, 
however, and refused this invitation. 
The incident stirred Madam to urge an 
Irish Boy Scout movement. She could 
not find any one to take it up with 
energy, so she decided to do it herself 
with Pearse's cooperation. Madam 
had never done work of this sort, but 
that did not deter her. Since it must 
be an organization that would do some- 
thing for Irish spirit in Irish boys, she 
named it after the Fianna Fireann, a 
military organization during the reign 
of Cormac MacAirt, one of the old Irish 
heroes. Its story was one of daring 
and chivalry such as would appeal to 
boys. With this name went instruc- 
tion in Ireland's history in the days of 
her independence and great deeds, as 
i6 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

well as instruction in scouting and 
shooting. 

At Cullenswood House, where Pad- 
raic Pearse had his boys' school until it 
outgrew these quarters, there is a fresco 
in the hall that pictures an old 
Druid warning the boy hero, Cuchul- 
lain, that whoever takes up arms on a 
certain day will become famous, but will 
die an early death. The answer, which 
became a motto for the boys in that 
school and also a prophecy of their 
teacher's death, is in old Irish beneath 
the fresco : 

**I care not if my life has only the 
span of a night and a day if my deeds 
be spoken of by the men of Ireland!" 

It was in this spirit of devotion to Ire- 
land that the Fianna boys were drilled. 
The house in Leinster Road was always 
running over with them, some as young 
as ten years. You would find them 
17 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

studying hard or, just as likely, sliding 
down the fine old banisters. Madam 
never went anywhere that they did not 
follow as a bodyguard. They loved her 
and trusted her, a high compliment, 
since I have always found that boys are 
keen judges of sincerity. If her work 
had been either pose or mere hysterical 
enthusiasm, as some English "friends" 
in Dublin have sought to make the world 
believe, these boys would have dis- 
covered it quickly enough. As it was, 
they remained her friends, and two of 
the younger men, executed after Easter 
Week, were volunteer officers who 
received their first training under 
Madam in the Fianna. 

The countess was one of the best 
shots in Ireland, and taught the boys 
how to shoot. After the rising, when 
we all had surrendered, there still was 
one house from which constant and 
i8 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

effective firing went on for three days. 
At last a considerable force of British 
took it by storm. Imagine the surprise 
of the officer in command when he 
found that its only occupants were three 
boys, all under sixteen ! 

*'Who taught you to shoot like that?" 
he asked them. 

*'The Countess Markievicz," came the 
answer. 

*'How often did she drill you?" 

"Only on Sundays," was the reply. 

''And these great lumps of mine," 
exclaimed the officer in disgust, *'are 
drilled twice a day and don't yet know 
their left foot from their right!" 

Madam also took real interest in the 
personal problems of her boys. While 
I was staying with her at Christmas, she 
was teaching a boy to sing. He was 
slowly growing blind, and nothing could 
be done to save his sight; but she de- 
19 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

termined that he should have a liveli- 
hood, and spent hours of her crowded 
days in teaching him the words and 
music of all the best patriotic songs and 
ballads. If she heard that any of the 
boys were sick, she would have them 
brought over to Surrey House where 
she herself could nurse and cheer them. 
Between times she would rouse their 
love of country to a desire to study its 
history. 

When I told Madam I could pass as a 
boy, even if it came to wrestling or 
whistling, she tried me out by putting 
me into a boy's suit, a Fianna uniform. 
She placed me under the care of one of 
her boys to whom she explained I was 
a girl, but that, since it might be neces- 
sary some day to disguise me as a boy, 
she wanted to find whether I could 
escape detection. I was supposed to be 
one of the Glasgow Fianna. We went 
20 




M.\li(. Mil. 1 SMWIDER 
(wearing boy's clothes) 



^ 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

out, joined the other Fianna, and walked 
about the streets whistHng rebel tunes. 
Whenever we passed a British soldier 
we made him take to the gutter, telling 
him the streets of Dublin were no place 
''for the likes of him." 

The boys took me for one of them- 
selves, and some began to tell me their 
deeds of prowess in Dublin. Ever since 
the war began they had gone about to 
recruiting meetings, putting speakers to 
rout and sometimes upsetting the plat- 
forms. This sounds like rowdyism, 
but it is only by such tests of courage 
and strength that the youth of a domi- 
nated race can acquire the self-confi- 
dence needed later for the real struggle. 

They sang for me Madam's "Anti- 
recruiting Song," which they always 
used as an accompaniment to their 
attacks on recruiting-booths. Its first 
two lines go thus : 

23 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

The recruiters are raidin' old Dublin, 

boys! 
It 's them we '11 have to be troublin', boys ! 

And the last two lines are : 

From a Gael with a gun the Briton will 

run ! 
And we '11 dance at the wake of the Empire, 

boys ! 

These disturbances by the Fianna 
were part of a campaign by which 
Nationalists hoped to keep Irishmen out 
of the war and ready for their own fight 
when the time came. Many were kept 
at home, but hundreds, thrown out of 
work by their employers with the direct 
purpose of making them enter the Brit- 
ish army, had to enlist for the pitiful 
''king's shilling." Nothing so illus- 
trates the complete lack of humor of the 
British as their method of arousing 
interest in the war. They declared it 
24 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

was the part of England to "defend the 
honor and integrity of small nations"! 

Even before the war the countess had 
watched for any opportunity to destroy 
militarist propaganda. Although Eng- 
land has won the world's heart by ex- 
plaining she never considered there was 
danger of war, and for that reason the 
preparedness of her enemy was an un- 
fair advantage, still, we had heard of 
the German menace for a long time. It 
was announced in Dublin that the play, 
"An Englishman's Elome," which had 
had a long run in London, where it 
pictured to thousands the invasion of 
England by the Germans, was to open 
for an equally long run in the Irish 
capital to stir us to take precautions 
against invasion. 

Madam took her Fianna boys in full 
force to the opening night performance. 
They occupied pit and gallery while the 
25 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

rest of the theater was filled with Brit- 
ish officers and their wives. The fine 
uniforms and evening dress made a 
great showing, for Dublin is the most 
heavily garrisoned city of its size in the 
world. 

The play went on peacefully enough 
until the Germans appeared on the 
stage. At their first appearance as the 
invading foe, the Fianna, in green shirts 
and saffron kilts, stood up and sung in 
German "The Watch on the Rhine," 
just as the countess had taught it to 
them. 

Of course there was consternation, 
but after a moment an officer stood up 
and began to sing "God Save the King." 
All the other officers and the "ascend- 
ancy people," as we call our English 
upper class in Ireland, rose and joined 
him. But you cannot safely sing "God 
Save the King" in Dublin. Eggs and 
26 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

vegetables at once began to fly, and the 
curtain had to be rung down. So ended 
the Dublin run of "An Englishman's 
Home"! 

These things the Fianna boys told me 
on our way to the shooting-gallery 
where they wanted to see the Glasgow 
''boy" shoot. I hit the bull's-eye 
oftener than any of them, much to the 
delight of the boy who knew I was a 
girl. He was not much surprised, how- 
ever, for by her own skill Madam had 
accustomed them to expect good marks- 
manship in a woman. 



27 



II 

As this was my first visit to Dublin, 
Madam thought I might want to 
see some of the sights. She took me to 
a museum and next suggested that we 
visit an art gallery. 

"What I really want to see," I told 
her, "is the poorest part of Dublin, the 
very poorest part." 

This pleased her, for her heart is 
always there. She took me to Ash 
Street. I do not believe there is a worse 
street in the world than Ash Street. It 
lies in a hollow where sewage runs and 
refuse falls; it is not paved and is full 
of holes. One might think it had been 
under shell-fire. Some of the houses 
have fallen down, — from sheer weari- 
28 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ness it seems, — while others are shored 
up at the sides with beams. The fallen 
houses look like corpses, the others like 
cripples leaning upon crutches. 

Dublin is full of such streets, lanes, 
and courts where houses, years ago con- 
demned by the authorities, are still 
tenanted. These houses are symbolic 
of the downfall of Ireland. They were 
built by rich Irishmen for their homes. 
To-day they are tenements for the 
poorest Irish people, but they have not 
been remodeled for this purpose, and 
that is one reason why them seem so 
appalling — the poor among the ruins of 
grandeur. 

In one room, perhaps a drawing- 
room, you find four families, each in its 
own corner, with sometimes not as much 
as the tattered curtains for partitions. 
Above them may be a ceiling of won- 
derfully modeled and painted figures, a 
29 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

form of decoration the art of which has 
been lost. At the end of this room is a 
mantel of purest white marble over an 
enormous fireplace long ago blocked up, 
except for a small opening in which a 
few coals at a time may be burned. 
The doors of such a room are often 
made of solid mahogany fifteen feet in 
height. 

The gas company of Dublin refuses 
to furnish gas above the second floor, 
and the little fireplaces can never give 
enough heat, even when fuel is compar- 
atively plentiful. As I write, coal is 
fifteen dollars a ton, and is costing the 
poor, who buy in small quantities, from 
thirty to forty-five per cent. more. 

In Dublin there are more than twenty 
thousand such rooms in which one or 
more families are living. That epi- 
demics are not more deadly speaks well 
for the fundamental health of those who 
30 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

live in them, for there are no sanitary 
arrangements. Water is drawn from a 
single tap somewhere in the backyard. 
The only toilet, to be used by all the 
people in any one of these houses, is also 
in the backyard or, worse still, in a dark, 
unventilated basement. 

The head of a family in these one- 
time "mansions," which number several 
thousand, seldom makes more than four 
or five dollars a week! Of this amount, 
if they want the luxury of even a small 
room to themselves, they must pay 
about a dollar. Is it any wonder that 
the word ''rent" has a fearful sound to 
the Irish ? After this rent is paid, there 
is not much left for food and clothes. 
Starvation, even in time of peace, is 
always hovering near. Bread and tea 
foi breakfast, but rarely butter; bread 
and tea, and either herrings or potatoes, 
sometimes with cabbage, for their mid- 
31 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

day meal; bread and tea for supper. 
Two fifths of the inhabitants of Dubhn 
live on this fare the year round. If 
they have beef or mutton once a week 
they must eat it boiled or fried, since 
the fireplaces are too primitive for roast- 
ing or baking. Neither will they permit 
baking of bread or cakes. 

Yet Ireland could raise fruit and 
vegetables and grain. for twenty million 
people! I have seen ships deep laden 
with food for need of which the Irish 
are slowly starving — I contend under- 
nourishment is starvation — going in a 
steady stream to England. The reason 
was that the English were able to pay 
better prices than the man at home. 
Food, since the beginning of the war, 
has literally been drained out of the 
country. Ireland to-day is in a state of 
famishment, if not of famine. 

Here in Dublin, though the streets 
32 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

and lanes seem full of children, the \ 
death-rate is tremendously high. The 
population of all Ireland has decreased 
fifty per cent, in fifty years. In Poland, 
under the rule of the Russian czar, the 
population increased. It is one thing to 
read about Irish "grievances," it is 
another to be living where they go on 
year after year. 

''Grievance" — that is the way the 
British sum up our sense of wrong, 
and with such efifect that people the 
world over fancy our wrongs are not 
wrongs but imagined grievances. The 
word itself counts against us in the 
eyes of those who have never been to 
Ireland and seen for themselves the con- 
ditions under which the great majority 
of the population must live. To be 
sure, there are always complaints car- 
ried to Parliament and then a "commis- 
sion of inquiry," followed a little later 
2>Z 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

by a ''report upon conditions." But the 
actual results seem small. It was dis- 
gust for this sort of carrying out com- 
plaints in a basket and bringing back 
reports in the very same basket that 
roused Arthur Griffith to write his pam- 
phlet on Hungary and her rebuilding 
from within. He felt that the Irish, 
too, must set about saving themselves 
without political help from parlia- 
mentarians. He even went so far as 
to say that, since Irishmen who went to 
Parliament seemed so soon to forget 
their country except as it served their 
political advancement, we ought not to 
send men to Parliament. Ireland, he 
declared, should concentrate upon the 
economic and industrial life possible to 
her — a life that could be developed won- 
derfully if men set out to win Ireland 
for the Irish. This propaganda of 
Griffith's — for it soon became such — 
34 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

stirred all the young men and women 
who before had been hopeless. "Ire- 
land for the Irish!" The movement 
quickly became what is called the "Sinn 
Fein," which is Gaelic for "Ourselves 
Alone." 

That this organization should be con- 
sidered in America as a sort of "Black 
Hand," or anarchistic society, is evi- 
dence of the impression it made upon 
the English as a powerful factor to be 
reckoned with. It had come into being 
overnight, but its principles were as old 
as Ireland. It sprang from a love of 
Ireland and not, as many believe, from 
hatred of England. It could not have 
thrived as it did wherever it touched a 
young heart and brain if it had merely 
been a protest. It had a national ideal 
and goal. Every day was dedicated to 
it. To speak the Irish language; to 
wear Irish-made clothes of Irish tweed; 
35 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

to think and feel, write, paint, or work 
for the best interests of Ireland; to 
make every act, personal or communal, 
count for the betterment of Ireland — 
all this was animated by love of our 
country. The Sinn Fein was constantly 
inspired by poems and essays which ap- 
peared in Arthur Griffith's weekly mag- 
azine. That poetry to-day is known 
throughout civilization as the poetry of 
the '^Cehic Revival." 

There was a gospel of "passive re- 
sistance," too, which led Irishmen to 
refuse to pay taxes or take any part in 
the Anglicizing of Ireland. It was this 
phase that soon won the disapproval of 
the party that stood for parliamentary 
activity, and naturally it aroused dis- 
satisfaction in England. 

From Ash Street the countess took 
me to Glasnevin Cemetery, where men 
36 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

lie buried, who, having Hved under con- 
ditions such as I had just looked upon, 
spent their lives in protest against the 
same. Here was the grave of O'Dono- 
van Rossa and a score of others whom 
I felt were heroes. Here, also, was the 
grave of Anne Devlin, that brave 
woman who refused to betray Robert 
Emmet to the British officers seeking 
him after his unsuccessful effort to 
oppose English rule in 1803. These 
graves and the ruinous houses of Ash 
Street show patriotism and poverty 
working for each other and, despite 
themselves, against each other. 

A few months after my visit, there 
was fighting all about Glasnevin Ceme- 
tery between the Royal Irish Constab- 
ulary and those who were to carry on 
the traditions of the great struggle. 

Not far from the home of Countess 
Markievicz stand the Portobello bar- 
Z7 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

racks, while much farther off are the 
Beggar's Bush barracks. She asked 
me one day if I thought I could make a 
plan of the latter from observation that 
would be of use if at any time it was 
decided to dynamite them. She gave 
no explanation, did not even tell me in 
what part of Dublin the barracks were 
located nor that two officers of the Irish 
Volunteers had already tried to make 
this plan and had failed. But she knew 
that I had had experience in gaging dis- 
tances and drawing maps. I had just 
taken a course in calculus, and it was 
when telling her of my love for mathe- 
matics that she set me this task. 

There was a large map of Dublin on 
the wall of a study in her house. I 
scrutinized this carefully, for I did not 
know my way alone about Dublin. 
Then I started out and found the place 
without great difficulty. It is in the 
38 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

southwestern outskirts of the city, a 
large, brick structure fiUing in the right 
angle where two streets meet. From 
this corner I walked very slowly along 
the front of the barracks, counting my 
paces, gaging the height of the outer 
wall, and studying the building itself 
for anything its secretive exterior might 
betray. I presently noticed that the 
loopholes which appeared in the wall at 
regular intervals stopped short a num- 
ber of yards from the corner. They 
had been filled in with bricks of a 
slightly different color than the rest of 
the wall. At once I asked myself why 
this had been done and, to discover the 
reason, if possible, crossed the street to 
where I could look over the wall. I was 
able to see that within the right angle at 
the corner was a small, circular build- 
ing. It stood close to both the front 
and side wall, yet did not touch either. 
39 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

There was room for a sentry to walk 
around it, and all loopholes near it had 
been bricked up. 

The conclusion I drew from this fact 
was that here was a powder magazine. 
It was so placed as not to be too notice- 
able from the street, easily guarded by 
a sentry, and conveniently near the loop- 
holes in case defense of the barracks 
became necessary. 

I walked away, and next approached 
the barracks from another side. Here 
I found that between the street and the 
main wall was a low outer wall about my 
own height. When I reached the spot 
where I thought the magazine ought to 
be, I took my handkerchief and let 
it blow — accidentally, of course — over 
this outer wall. A passing boy gal- 
lantly offered to get it for me. Being a 
woman and naturally curious, I found it 
necessary to pull myself up on tiptoe to 
40 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

watch him as he cHmbed over the wall. 
The ground between the two walls had 
not been paved, but was of soft earth. 
I had seen enough. Thanking the boy, 
I put my handkerchief carefully into my 
pocket so as not to trouble any one else 
by making them climb about on Dublin 
walls, and went on my way. 

Upon my return to Leinster Road, I 
gave the distances and heights I had 
taken to Madam, describing the way a 
hole could be dug, under cover of a dark 
night, between the two walls close to 
where the magazine stood. A quantity 
of explosive could be placed in this hole, 
a long wire could be attached to a de- 
tonator and laid along the outer wall for 
some distance, and then, without being 
noticed, some one could touch the end 
of the wire with the battery from a 
pocket flashlamp. The explosion that 
followed, I felt sure, would blow up not 
41 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

only the inner wall, but the wall of the 
magazine and set off the powder stored 
therein. Madam asked me to write this 
all down. Later she showed what I had 
written to the man who was to be Com- 
mander-in-chief of the Republican army 
in Dublin, James Connolly. He knew 
Beggar's Bush barracks well enough to 
see that my map was correct and be- 
lieved the plan practicable enough to 
carry out in case conscription should be- 
come a fact in Ireland despite all prom- 
ises to the contrary. 

But the test I had been put to was, it 
seemed, not merely a test of my ability 
to draw maps and figure distances. 
From that day I was taken into the con- 
fidence of the leaders of the movement 
for making Ireland a republic. 

The situation, I learned from Mr. 
Connolly, was very hopeful, because for 
the first time in hundreds of years those 
42 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

who were planning a revolution to free 
Ireland had organized bodies of Irish- 
men who not only were well trained in 
the use of firearms, but so full of the 
spirit of the undertaking that they were 
ready at a moment's notice to mobilize. 
There was the Irish Citizen Army 
which Mr. Connolly had organized 
after the Transport Workers' strike to 
defend working-men from onslaughts by 
the police. I do not believe any one 
who has not seen what we call a ''baton 
charge" of the Dublin police can quite 
comprehend the motives which make for 
such ruthless methods. 

In the first place, whenever the police 
are called out for strike duty or to be on 
the lookout for rioting, they are given 
permission to drink all they wish. At 
the station-houses are big barrels of 
porter from which the police are ex- 
pected to help themselves freely. Then 
43 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the saloon-keepers — we call them pub- 
licans — are not expected to refuse a 
drink to any policeman who demands it, 
and are paid or not according to the 
mood of the protector of the public 
peace. Add to this that the police do 
not attack in order to disperse a crowd, 
but to kill. In a public square where a 
crowd has gathered to hear a labor 
speech, the police assemble on four sides 
and, upon a given signal, rush to the 
center, pushing even innocent pass- 
ers-by into the midst of the crowd that, 
on the instant, has become a mob. 
Then the police use their batons like shil- 
lalahs, swinging them around and 
around before bringing them down upon 
the heads of the people. 

Fearing one of these baton attacks in 

19 1 3, Madam, having come down to the 

square in her car, had just stepped out 

upon the sidewalk when she was struck 

44 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

full in the face by a policeman's club! 
On that same day, too, the police rushed 
into the adjoining streets and clubbed 
every person they met, even people sev- 
eral blocks from the square who, at the 
moment, were coming out of church 
from vesper service. 

Mr. Connolly found that in any strike 
in Ireland the interests of England and 
of the employer were the same; that his 
strikers had to meet the two members 
of the opposition without any defense. 
Therefore he had organized the men 
who were fighting for better hours and 
wages into a "Citizen Army." It is 
against the law for any one to bear arms 
in Ireland, but in this case the authori- 
ties could do nothing because they had 
not disarmed the men of Ulster when the 
latter armed and drilled to defend them- 
selves against Home Rule, should it be- 
come a fact. The Ulster-men were 
45 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

openly planning insurrection under Sir 
Edward Carson — insurrection against 
a law, a political measure desired by the 
majority! It was an anarchistic out- 
break that Carson had in mind. Mr. 
Connolly, on the other hand, was organ- 
izing simply for defense against police 
power that had grown unbridled in its 
activities. No one interfered with him. 
As always, this organization was un- 
der surveillance, and reports about it 
were sent to the authorities. But there 
appeared to be no more than three hun- 
dred members, a small body not dan- 
gerous to the police if it should come 
into conflict with them. It was not 
known that there were several times 
three hundred members, but that only 
this number was allowed to drill or 
march at any one time. This drilling 
baffled the police. Many a night the 
three hundred would be mobilized and 
46 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

quietly march through DubHn out into 
the country, the poHce traiHng wearily 
and nervously after them, expecting 
some excitement along the line of march. 
Nothing ever happened. Back to town 
in the wee, small hours the police would 
come, only to see the men disperse as 
quietly as they had assembled and go 
home to bed. After this had happened 
many times, it no longer attracted offi- 
cial attention. Only perfunctory re- 
ports were made of any mobilization of 
the Citizen Army, and thus it came 
about that on Easter Sunday the mo- 
bilization was taken for nothing more 
than the usual drill and not reported. 

The second organization, the Irish 
Volunteers, was brought into being by 
those in favor of Home Rule, and was 
a makeweight against the Ulster-men. 
Since the Irish Volunteers were organ- 
ized to protect law, to uphold Home 
47 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Rule should it become a fact as prom- 
ised, nothing could be done by the au- 
thorities when the volunteers began to 
arm themselves. Besides, nothing had 
been done to prevent the Ulster-men 
from arming themselves. The conserv- 
ative press in England actually sup- 
ported the Ulster-men, and English 
army officers resigned rather than dis- 
arm them. What, then, could they be 
expected to do to a body of men who 
stood for law and order instead of op- 
posing it as in Ulster? This situation 
made possible a strategic position for 
the leaders of the Republican move- 
ment. 

Had not the authorities realized that 
now they would meet with armed re- 
sistance if they broke their promise 
about conscription, we should have had 
to send our brothers to France and 
Flanders early in the war. But the 
48 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers 
had no intention of allowing men to be 
carried off to fight England's battles 
when, for the first time in many years, 
there was a chance of winning freedom 
for Ireland. To keep this constantly in 
the public mind, Mr. Connolly had a 
large sign hung over the main entrance 
to Liberty Hall, his headquarters: 

WE SERVE NEITHER KING NOR 
KAISER, BUT IRELAND 



49 



Ill 

THE need of explosives was great, 
and I took part in a number of ex- 
peditions to obtain them. One night we 
raided a ship lying in the river. The 
sailors were drunk, and three or four of 
our men had no trouble in getting into 
the hold. I was standing guard on the 
other side of the embankment wall, 
holding one end of a string that served 
as a telegraph between our outposts in 
the street and our men in the boat. One 
jerk from me meant, "Some one com- 
ing"; two jerks, ''Police"; three jerks, 
"Clear out as best you can." 

Suddenly I heard the outpost up the 
street whistling a patriotic tune. This 
was a signal to me. It meant the po- 
50 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

lice were coming. I gave two jerks of 
the string and waited. 

A policeman came slowly toward me. 
He had his dark-lantern and, catching 
sight of me, flashed it in my face. He 
stared, but said nothing. No doubt he 
was wondering what a decently dressed 
girl was doing in that part of town at 
such an hour. I watched him as closely 
as he watched me. H he caught sight 
of my string, I intended to give three 
jerks, and, at the same moment, throw 
pepper in his face, my only weapon. 

But he did not notice the string, and 
passed on. My heart had stopped beat- 
ing; now it began again, though I felt 
rather queer. Risks like this have to 
be taken, however, when one is prepar- 
ing a revolution and has neither fire- 
arms nor ammunition, the people in 
power having put an embargo upon 
them. It is all in the way of war. I 
51 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

can add that this raid was as successful 
as usual. 

One day the countess took several of 
us, including her dog Poppet, out be- 
yond Dundrum. Upon our return we 
could call this expedition ''a little shoot- 
ing party." And it would be the truth, 
for Poppet, being an Irish cocker, more 
interested in hunting than in revolts, 
joined himself to two men who were in- 
tent on getting birds. He was of so 
great assistance that these men, in rec- 
ognition of his services, gave us a few 
of the birds he brought in. We took 
them home as trophies. 

But the whole truth was that we had 
been out to test dynamite. We were 
looking for some old wall to blow up, 
and found one on the side of a hill. 
After the hunters had disappeared, two 
of us were posted with field-glasses 
while Madam set off the explosive. It 
52 




A FIANNA BOY 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

was a lonely place, so we were not dis- 
turbed. The great stones flew into the 
air with dust and thunder. Indeed, the 
country people round about, when they 
heard that rumble and saw the cloud of 
smoke, must have wondered at the sud- 
den thunder-storm on the hill. 

An Irishman told me once that, al- 
though he had hoped for a revolution 
and worked for it, he had never felt it 
would be a reality until one night when 
he and some friends, out cross-country 
walking in the moonlight, came upon 
Madam and her Fianna boys bivouacked 
in the open. They had come out for a 
drill. She was in uniform, with knee- 
breeches, puttees, and officer's coat, and 
the whole scene was martial and intense. 

The Fianna were proud of the fact 
that they were the first military organ- 
ization in Ireland, four years older than 
either the Irish Citizen Army or the 
55 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Irish Volunteers. It was in 1909 that 
the countess heard of Baden-Powell 
coming to Ireland to organize his Brit- 
ish Boy Scouts, where they might be 
useful later on to the empire. She 
tried to get people interested in organiz- 
ing the same way for Ireland, and fi- 
nally made this her own task, though 
she knew nothing of military tactics and 
as little of boys. There was virtually 
no money or equipment like that in 
Baden-Powell's organization, and nat- 
urally many blunders were made at the 
outset. But she studied both boys and 
tactics, and finally came to believe that 
to succeed, the spirit of old Ireland must 
be invoked. So the organization was 
given the historic Gaelic name, Fianna, 
with its flavor of romance and patriotic 
tradition. The boys saved up their 
money for uniforms and equipment, and 
from the beginning were aware of them- 
56 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

selves as an independent, self-respecting 
body. They have stood well the test of 
the revolution. 

One of the most popular actresses 
at the Abbey Theater in Dublin was 
Helen Maloney. Through her energy 
Mr. Connolly returned from America to 
organize the working-men of Ireland, 
and thus met the countess. From the 
friendship and cooperation of these 
three persons, you can judge how all 
class distinction had gone down before 
the love of Ireland and the determina- 
tion to free her. 

James Connolly was a very quiet man 
at the time I met him, quiet and tense. 
He was short and thick-set, with a 
shrewd eye and determined speech. 
He proved a genius at organization, and 
this was lucky, for in Dublin there are 
no great factories, except Guinness's, to 
employ large numbers of men, and this 
57 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

makes organization difficult. To have 
managed such a strike as the Transport 
Workers' in 1913, after only half a 
dozen years of organization, is proof 
of his great ability. And then to or- 
ganize a Citizen's Army! 

Connolly is the answer to those who 
think the rising was the work of dream- 
ers and idealists. No one who knew 
him could doubt that when he led his 
army of working-men into battle for the 
Irish Republic, he believed there was a 
good fighting chance to establish such 
a republic. He was practical, and had 
no wish to spill blood for the mere glory 
of it; there was nothing melodramatic 
about him. A north of Ireland man, — 
he originally came from the only part of 
Ireland I know well. County Monaghan, 
— he had many times given proof of 
sound judgment and courage. He was 
often at the house of the countess while 

58 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

I was visiting her, and one evening, just 
before I left, Madam called my atten- 
tion to the fact that he was in better 
spirits than for a long time past. Word 
had come to him from America that on 
or near Easter Sunday a shipf ul of arms 
and ammunition would arrive in Ire- 
land. This news determined the date 
of the rising, for it was all that was 
needed from without to insure success. 
We believed this then, and do still. 

We were collecting and hiding what 
arms and ammunition we could. In 
proportion to the amount of courage of 
those in the secret, so the dynamite that 
they hid against the day soon to come 
grew and accumulated. Though the 
house in Leinster Road was always 
watched, the countess had it stocked like 
an arsenal. Bombs and rifles were hid- 
den in absurd places, for she had the 
skill to do it and escape detection. A 
59 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

French journalist who visited DubHn 
shortly before the insurrection possibly 
came upon some of this evidence, or 
perhaps it was only the Fianna uniforms 
which impressed him, for he wrote: 

"The salon of the Countess Mar- 
kiewicz is not a salon. It is a military 
headquarters." 

Despite this martial ardor, Madam 
found time to write poetry and "sedi- 
tious" songs. This poetry would be in 
print now had not the house of Mrs. 
Wise- Power, where she left it for safe- 
keeping, been blown to pieces by Eng- 
lish gunners when they tried to find the 
range of the post-office. Their marks- 
manship would not have been so poor, 
perhaps, had they had the countess to 
teach them. 

Many of the singers of our old and 
new lays are in prison, sentenced for 
their part in stirring up insurrection, 
60 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

even though they had nothing to do 
with the rising itself. The authorities 
seemed to take no notice of these pa- 
triotic concerts while they were being 
given, but afterward they paid this mod- 
ern minstrelsy the tribute it deserved. 
For these concerts were full of inspi- 
ration to every one who attended. 
Though all were in the open, they were, 
as a matter of fact, "seditious," if that 
word means stirring up rebellion against 
those who rule you against your will. 

One of the many things I recall gives 
a clear idea of the untiring and never- 
ending enthusiasm of the countess. 
She realized one day that the Christmas- 
cards usually sold in Ireland were 
*'made in Germany," and since the war 
was on, had been supplanted by cards 
''made in England." She sat down at 
once to design Irish Christmas-cards 
for the holiday season of 1916. But 
61 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

when that Christmas came around she 
was in prison, and the cards were — no 
one can say where. 

When I left DubHn to return to my 
teaching in Glasgow, they made me 
promise that I would come back when- 
ever they sent for me, probably just be- 
fore Easter. 



62 



IV 

WHEN I told my mother on my 
return of the plans for Easter, 
she shook her head. 

'There never was an Irish rising that 
some one did n't betray it," she said. 
*'It was so in '67, and before that in 
1798." 

But she did not appreciate the spirit 
I had found in Dublin. I told her that 
all were united, rich and poor, dock- 
workers, school-teachers, poets, and 
bar-tenders. They were working to- 
gether ; I believed they would stand and 
fight together. And I was right. 

It was not easy to go quietly back to 
teaching mathematics and hear only 
now and then what was going on in 
63 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Dublin. Fortunately, Glasgow is two 
fifths Irish. Indeed, there are as many 
Irish there as in Dublin itself, and the 
spirit among the younger generation is 
perhaps more intense because we are a 
little to one side and thus afraid of be- 
coming outsiders. 

In February, when conscription came 
to Scotland, there was nothing for mem- 
bers of the Irish Volunteers in Glasgow 
to do but to disappear. I knew one lad 
of seventeen whose parents, though 
Irish, wanted him to volunteer in the 
service of the empire. He refused, 
telling them his life belonged to Ire- 
land. He went over to fight at the time 
of the rising, and served a year in 
prison afterward. 

Whenever an Irish Volunteer was 

notified to report for service in the 

Glasgow contingent of the British army, 

he would slip across the same night to 

64 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Ireland, and go to Kimmage, where a 
camp was maintained for these boys. 
While the British military authorities 
were hunting for them in Scotland and 
calling them "slackers," they were drill- 
ing and practising at the target, or 
making ammunition for a cause they 
believed in and for which they were 
ready to die. 

Presently news came from Dublin 
that James Connolly had written a play 
entitled, ''Under which Flag?" We 
heard also that when it was produced, 
it had a great effect upon the public. 
In this play the hero, during the last act, 
chooses the flag of the republic and the 
final curtain falls. Some one told Mr. 
Connolly he ought to write another act 
to show what happened afterward. 
His reply was that another act would 
have to be written by "all of us to- 
gether." 

65 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

I know that many people in this coun- 
try have seen the Irish Players and felt 
their work was a great contribution to 
the drama, but I doubt if any one here 
can realize what it means to see upon 
the stage a play dealing with your hopes 
and fears just at a time when one or 
the other are about to be realized. For 
ten years the world has watched with 
interest as these plays were staged, as 
poetry appeared which seemed to have 
a new note in it. The world called it a 
''Celtic Revival." England, too, was 
interested, for these Irish playwrights, 
poets, and painters served to stimulate 
her own artists. What if some of the 
sagas, revived by archaeologists, did 
picture Irish heroism? What if the 
theme of play or poem was a free Ire- 
land? What if school-boys under a 
Gaelic name did play at soldiering? 

''Dangerous?" some one asked. 
66 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

"Nonsense!" retorted mighty Eng- 
land. "Would poets, pedagogues, and 
dreamers dare to lead the Irish people 
against the imperial power that had 
dominated them for centuries? Un- 
thinkable!" 

England has never understood us so 
little as in these last ten years. Our 
pride was growing tremendously — 
pride not in what we have, but in what 
we are. The Celtic Revival was only 
an expression of this new pride. 

It was on the eighteenth of April that 
a member of the Dublin town council 
discovered that the British meant to 
seize all arms and ammunition of the 
Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen 
Army. History was repeating itself. 
It was on an eighteenth of April that 
American colonists discovered the Brit- 
ish intention of seizing their arms and 
ammunition at Concord. In both cases 
67 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

revolt was made inevitable by this ac- 
tion. 

What the reason was that led imme- 
diately to such an order being given to 
the British military authorities in Dub- 
lin, I do not know. It had to do with 
conscription, of course, and it may have 
been quickened by the resistance of the 
Irish Citizen Army to the police. 
Madam told me that, a short time before, 
the police had attempted one noon to 
raid Liberty Hall while they supposed 
the place was empty. By the merest ac- 
cident, she and Mr. Connolly, with one 
or two others, were still there. The ob- 
ject of the raid was to get possession of 
the press on which was printed "The 
Workers' Republic," a paper published 
at the hall by Mr. Connolly. 

When the first members of the police 
force entered, Connolly asked them if 
they had a warrant. They had none. 
68 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

He told them they could not come in 
without one. At the same time the 
counters quietly drew her revolver and 
as quietly pointed it in their direction 
in a playful manner. They understood 
her, however, and quickly withdrew to 
get their warrant. 

Immediately Connolly sent an order 
for the Citizen Army to mobilize. 
How they came! On the run, slipping 
into uniform coats as they ran; several 
from the tops of buildings where they 
were at work, others from under- 
ground. More than one, thinking this 
an occasion of some seriousness, in- 
stantly threw up their jobs. 

By the time the police returned 
with their warrant, the Irish Citizen 
Army was drawn up around Liberty 
Hall, ready to defend it. It was not 
raided. 

Mr. Connolly showed me a copy of 
69 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the secret order when I arrived on Holy 
Thursday. It read: 

The following precautionary measures have 
been sanctioned by the Irish Office on recom- 
mendation of the General Officer commanding 
the forces in Ireland. All preparations will 
be made to put these measures in force imme- 
diately on receipt of an order issued from the 
Chief Secretary's Office, Dublin Castle, and 
signed by the Under Secretary and the Gen- 
eral Officer commanding the forces in Ireland. 

First, the following persons will be put 
under arrest : All members of the Sinn Fein 
National Council, the Central Executive Irish 
Sinn Fein Volunteer County Board, Irish Sinn 
Fein Volunteers, Executive Committee Na- 
tional Volunteers, Coisda Gnotha Committee, 
Gaelic League. See list A3 and 4, and sup- 
plementary list A2. 

I interrupt the order to emphasize the 
fact that we were all listed, and that 
the "Sinn Fein" organization seemed to 
attract most attention from the author- 
ities. Indeed, after it was all over, the 
70 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

rising was often called the "Sinn Fein 
Revolt." The Sinn Fein was an organ- 
ization which had become a menace to 
Great Britain because of its tactics of 
passive resistance. The words Sinn 
Fein, as already stated, mean "ourselves 
alone," and the whole movement was 
for an Irish Ireland. 

The Sinn Feiners are likened to the 
"Black Hand" or other anarchistic 
groups by those who read of them as 
leaders of a "revolt." As a matter of 
fact, they were, from the first, the liter- 
ary, artistic, and economic personalities 
who started the Celtic Revival. Ar- 
thur Griffiths, who is not given enough 
credit for the passion with which he 
conceived the idea of working for Ire- 
land as Hungarians worked for Hun- 
gary, published a little weekly maga- 
zine in which the first of the new poetry 
appeared. It appealed to the deepest in- 
71 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

stincts in us; it was a revolt of the spirit, 
clothing itself in practical deed. 

But it was not a negative program. 
The refusal to do or say or think in the 
Anglicized way, as was expected of us, 
held in it loyalty to something fine and 
free, the existence of which we believed 
in because we had read of it in the his- 
tory of Ireland in our sagas. We were 
not a people struggling up into an un- 
tried experience, but a people regaining 
our kingdom, which at one time in the 
history of mankind had been called 
"great" wherever it was known of or 
rumored. 

This was the feeling that animated 
the groups listed by British military 
men as the "Sinn Fein National Coun- 
cil" and "Central Executive and Coisda 
Gnotha Committee of the Gaelic 
League," but which to an outsider can- 
not, without explanation, give any idea 
72 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

of the fire and fervor implanted in com- 
mittee and council. 

But to return to the document. It 
went on: 

An order will be issued to the inhabitants of 
the city to remain in their homes until such 
time as the Competent Military Authority may 
otherwise direct and permit. 

Pickets chosen from units of Territorial 
Forces will be at all points marked on maps 3 
and 4. Accompanying mounted patrols will 
continuously visit all points and report every 
hour. 

The following premises will be occupied by 
adequate forces and all necessary measures 
used without need of reference to Head- 
quarters : 

First, premises known as Liberty Hall, 
Beresford Place ; 

No. 6 Harcourt Street, Sinn Fein Building; 

No. 2 Dawson Street, Headquarters Volun- 
teers ; 

No. 12 D'Olier Street, Nationality Office; 

No. 25 Rutland Square, Gaelic League of- 
fice; 

73 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

No. 41 Rutland Square, Foresters' Hall; 
Sinn Fein Volunteer premises in city; 
All National Volunteer premises in city ; 
Trades Council premises, Capel Street; 
Surrey House, Leinster Road, Rathmines. 

The following premises will be isolated, all 
communication to or from them prevented: 
Premises known as the Archbishop's House, 
Drumcondra ; Mansion House, Dawson Street ; 
No. 40 Herbert Park, Ballyboden; Saint En- 
da's College, Hermitage, Rathfarnham; and, 
in addition, premises in list 5 D, see maps 3 
and 4. 

This order should become a classic, 
because it is such a good list of all meet- 
ing-places of those who loved and 
worked for Ireland in the last few years. 
Even the home of the countess, Surrey 
House, was to have been occupied; and 
Saint Enda's, the school where Padraic 
Pearse was head master and chief in- 
spiration, was to be "isolated." 

Had there been any question about a 
74 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

rising, the possession of this secret or- 
der to the military authorities in DubHn 
would have been the signal for it. It 
was not to be expected that these head- 
quarters of all that was Irish in the city 
would surrender tamely to "occupa- 
tion." More than this, the order gave 
new determination to a secret organiza- 
tion not mentioned in it, the Irish Re- 
publican Brotherhood. Not that this 
was a new organization, or unknown to 
the British, for, in its several phases, it 
had been in existence since 1858. Its 
oath is secret, yet has been published in 
connection with disclosures about the 
Fenian movement. This was one of the 
names it bore, before the rising of 1867 
betrayed it to the Government. So at 
this time Connolly and Padraic Pearse 
and McDonagh, with all those working 
to free Ireland, were members of this 
brotherhood, and the republic seemed 
75 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

nearer becoming a reality than ever be- 
fore in the history of the long struggle. 

At Liberty Hall I saw the flag of the 
republic waiting to be raised. I saw, 
too, the bombs and ammunition stored 
there, and was set to work with some 
other girls making cartridges. This 
was on the Thursday before Easter. 
That same evening I was given a des- 
patch to take to Belfast. The address 
of the man to whom it was to be de- 
livered was at Mr. Connolly's home in 
the outskirts of the city. I was to go 
there first and get it from Nora Con- 
nolly, then go on to this man. 

I had never been in Belfast, and when 
I reached the city, it was two o'clock in 
the morning. The streets were dark 
and deserted. I finally had to ask a 
policeman which of the few cars run- 
ning would take me to that part of town 
where the Connollys lived. I wonder 
76 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

what he would have done had he guessed 
I was bent upon revolutionary business. 
There is something very weird in know- 
ing that while things are going on as 
usual in the outer world, great changes 
are coming unawares. 

I rang in vain when I reached the 
house. Could all the family be some- 
where else? Could I have made a mis- 
take? I was beginning to think so 
when a window opened, and I heard a 
voice say: "It's all right. Mother. 
It 's only a girl." Presently the door 
opened. They had been afraid that it 
was the police, for in these last few days 
before the time set, suspense was keen. 
At any moment all plans might be given 
away to the police and every one ar- 
rested. A ring in the middle of the 
night was terrifying. They had not 
been to bed; they were making Red 
Cross bandages and learning details of 
77 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

equipment and uniform for the first-aid 
girls. They had slept little for days, 
now that the time of the rising ap- 
proached. 

We did not dare go out again in the 
dead of night to hunt up the man for 
whom I had brought my despatch. This 
action would create suspicion. So about 
five o'clock, just when the working- 
people were beginning to go about their 
tasks, we took the street car, went into 
another part of Belfast, and found him. 

Mrs. Connolly and the girls went back 
to Dublin with me. They were to be 
there during the revolt, and did not 
know if they would ever see their home 
again ; but they dared not take anything 
with them except the clothes on their 
backs. Always no suspicion must be 
aroused; it must look as if they were 
starting off for the Easter holidays. 
This was not an easy leave-taking, for 
78 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

there was a fair chance of the house 
being sacked and burned. Mrs. Con- 
nolly went about, picking up little things 
that would go in her trunk but the 
absence of which would not be noticed 
if any inquisitive policeman came in to 
see whether anything suspicious was 
going on. As we left, none of them 
looked back or gave any show of feel- 
ing. Revolution makes brave actors. 

That afternoon I was again at am- 
munition work. This time my duty was 
to go about Dublin, taking from hiding- 
places dynamite and bombs secreted 
therein. Once, on my way back to 
Liberty Hall with some dynamite 
wrapped in a neat bundle on the seat 
beside me, I heard a queer, buzzing 
noise. It seemed to come from inside 
the bundle. 

'Ts it going off?" I asked myself, and 
sat tight, expecting every moment to be 
79 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

blown to bits. But nothing happened; 
it was only the car-wheels complaining 
as we passed over an uneven bit of track. 



80 



V 

IT was on Saturday morning that I 
heard the news of our first defeat 
— a defeat before we had begun. The 
ship with arms and ammunition that 
had been promised us while I was in 
DubHn at Christmas, had come into 
Tralee Harbor and waited twenty-one 
hours for the Irish Volunteers of Tra- 
lee to come and unload her. But it had 
attracted no attention except from a 
British patrol-boat, and so had to turn 
about and put to sea again. There- 
upon, the suspicions of the officials hav- 
ing led them to set out after the Aud, 
she had shown her German colors and, 
in full sight of the harbor, blew herself 
8i 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

up rather than allow her valuable cargo 
to fall into the hands of the British. 

Besides several machine-guns, twenty 
thousand rifles and a million rounds of 
ammunition were aboard that ship. 
For every one of those rifles we could 
have won a man to carry it in the rebel- 
lion. Thus their loss was an actual loss 
of fighting strength. 

It all was a blunder that now seems 
like fate. The Aud, as first planned, 
was to arrive on Good Friday. Then 
the leaders decided it would be better 
not to have her arrive until after the 
rising had begun, or on Easter. Word 
of this decision was sent to America, to 
be forwarded to Germany. This was 
done, but the Aud had just sailed, keep- 
ing to her original schedule. She car- 
ried no wireless, and so could not be 
reached at sea. 

I often think the heroic determination 

^2 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

of that captain to sink his ship and crew 
must have been preceded by many hours 
of bitterest chagrin and anxiety. He 
could not have had the sHghtest idea 
why the plan was not being carried out. 
It would have been, too, had the Volun- 
teers at Tralee, remembering the uncer- 
tainty of all communication, been on 
watch for fear the countermanding 
order might have miscarried. 

But it was too late now to draw back, 
even had the leaders so desired. I do 
not believe that idea ever entered their 
heads, for their course of action had 
been long planned. Two men, how- 
ever, were uncertain of the wisdom of 
going on with it. One of them, The 
O'Rahilly, was minister of munitions in 
the provisional government and felt the 
loss keenly, because his entire plan of 
work had been based on this cargo now 
at the bottom of the ocean. When he 
83 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

found that the majority beheved suc- 
cess was still possible, and that the 
seizure of arms in the British arsenals 
in Ireland would compensate for the 
loss, he gave in and worked as whole- 
heartedly as the others. The second 
man to demur was Professor Eoin Mc- 
Neill, who was at the head of the Irish 
Volunteers as their commander-in- 
chief. He did not wish to risk the lives 
of his men against such heavy odds. 
Yet, when he left the conference, he had 
not given one hint of actually opposing 
plans then under discussion. 

As I came out of church on Easter 
morning, I saw placards everywhere to 
this effect: 

NO VOLUNTEER MANCEUVERS 
TO-DAY 

This was astounding! The manoeu- 
vers were to be the beginning of the 
84 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

revolution. To-day they were not to be 
the usual, simple drill, but the real 
beginning of military action. All over 
Ireland the Volunteers were expected to 
mobilize and stay mobilized until the 
blow had been struck — until, perhaps, 
victory had been won. And the Irish 
Volunteers made up two thirds of our 
fighting force. "No Volunteer manoeu- 
vers to-day"? What could it mean? 

I bought a newspaper and read the 
Order of demobilization, signed by Pro- 
fessor McNeill. What could have hap- 
pened? I hurried to Liberty Hall to 
find the leaders there as much in the 
dark as I. They knew McNeill had 
been depressed and fearful of results, 
but they had not supposed him capable 
of actually calling ofif his men from the 
movement so late in the day, though this 
was quite within his technical rights if 
he wished. They had taken for granted 
85 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

that he, hke The O'Rahilly, would pre- 
fer to cast in his lot with the rest of us. 
I recalled that at Christmas the countess 
had been eager to have another head 
chosen for the Volunteers. Over and 
over again she had said that, though Mc- 
Neill had been splendid for purposes of 
organization, and the presence of so 
earnest and pacific a man in command of 
the Volunteers had prevented England 
from getting nervous, he was not the 
man for a crisis. She liked him, but her 
intuition proved right. He could not 
bear that his Irish Volunteers should 
risk their lives and gain nothing thereby. 
He truly believed they had no chance 
without the help the Aud had promised. 
As soon as he had published his demo- 
bilization order, he went to his home out- 
side Dublin and stayed there during the 
rising. It was there he was arrested 
and, though his action so helped the 
86 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

British that the royal commission after- 
ward said he "broke the back of the 
rebelHon," he was sentenced for Hfe, 
and sits to-day in Dartmoor Prison 
making sacks. This is the man who 
was one of our greatest authorities on 
early Irish history. 

There never was a hint of suspicion 
that McNeill's act was other than the 
result of fear. No one who knew him 
could doubt his loyalty to Ireland. It 
was his love for the Volunteers, the love 
of a man instinctively pacifist, that made 
him give that order. Oh, the satire of 
history ! By such an order, many of us 
believe, he delivered to the executioner 
the flower of Ireland's heart and brain. 
We believe that if those manceuvers had 
taken place at the time set, the British 
arsenals in Ireland would easily have 
been taken and arms provided for our 
men. Indeed, we would rather have 
87 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

taken arms and ammunition from the 
British than have accepted them as gifts 
from other people. 

The eternal buoyancy with which 
Irishmen are credited came to their 
rescue that Sunday morning. Mr. 
Connolly and others believed that if 
word was sent into the country districts 
that the Citizen Army was proceeding 
with its plans, that the Volunteers of 
Dublin, consisting of four battalions 
under Padraic Pearse and Thomas Mc- 
Donaugh, were going to mobilize, the 
response would be immediate. At once 
word was sent out broadcast. Norah 
Connolly walked eighty miles during 
the week through the country about 
Dublin, carrying orders from head- 
quarters. But she, like other messen- 
gers, found that the Volunteers were so 
accustomed to McNeill's signature that 
they were afraid to act without it. 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

They feared a British trick. We Irish 
are so schooled in suspicion that it some- 
times counts against us. In Galway 
they had heard that the rising in DubUn 
was on, and later put up such a fight 
that, had it been seconded in other coun- 
ties by even a few groups, the republic 
would have lived longer than it did. It 
might even have won the victory in 
which, only three days before, we all had 
faith. 

The Volunteers numbered men from 
every class and station; the Citizen 
Army was made up of working-men 
who had the advantage of being under 
a man of decision and quick judgment. 
At four o'clock the Citizen Army mo- 
biHzed in front of Liberty Hall to carry 
out the route march as planned. After 
this march the men were formed into 
a hollow square in front of Liberty Hall 
and Connolly addressed them. 
89 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

"You are now under arms," he con- 
cluded. "You will not lay down your 
arms until you have struck a blow for 
Ireland!" 

The men cheered, shots were fired 
into the air, and that night their bar- 
racks was Liberty Hall. 

You might think a demonstration of 
this character, a speech in the open, 
would attract enough attention from the 
police to make them send a report to the 
authorities. None was sent. They had 
come to feel, I suppose, that while there 
was so much talk there would be little 
action. Nor did they remember that 
Easter is always the anniversary of 
that fight hundreds of years ago when 
native Irish came to drive the foreigner 
from Dublin. This year, in addition, it 
fell upon the date of the Battle of Clon- 
tarf, so there was double reason for 
90 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

sentiment to seize upon the day for a 
revolt. 

During the night, Irishmen from 
England and Scotland who had been en- 
camped at Kimmage with some others, 
came into Dublin and joined the men at 
Liberty Hall. Next morning I saw 
them while they were drawn up, waiting 
for orders. Every man carried a rifle 
and a pike! Those pikes were admis- 
sion of our loss through the sinking of 
the Aud, for the men who carried them 
might have been shouldering additional 
rifles to give to any recruits picked up 
during the course of the day. Pikes 
would not appeal to an unarmed man as 
a fit weapon with which to meet British 
soldiers in battle. We could have used 
every one of those twenty thousand lost 
rifles, for they would have made a 
tremendous appeal. 
91 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

I was sent on my bicycle to scout 
about the city and report if troops from 
any of the barracks were stirring. 
They were not. Moreover, I learned 
that their officers, for the most part, 
were off to the races at Fairview in the 
gayest of moods. 

When I returned to report to Mr. 
Connolly, I had my first glimpse of 
Padraic Pearse, provisional president of 
the Irish Republic. He was a tall man, 
over six feet, with broad shoulders 
slightly stooped from long hours as a 
student and writer. But he had a sol- 
dierly bearing and was very cool and 
determined, I thought, for a man on 
whom so much responsibility rested, — 
at the very moment, too, when his dream 
was about to take form. Thomas 
McDonagh was also there. I had not 
seen him before in uniform, and he, too, 
gave me the impression that our Irish 
92 




JAMES CONNOLLY 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

scholars must be soldiers at bottom, so 
well did he appear in his green uni- 
form. At Christmas he had given me a 
fine revolver. It would be one of my 
proudest possessions if I had it now, but 
it was confiscated by the British. 

I was next detailed as despatch rider 
for the St. Stephen's Green Command. 
Again I went out to scout, this time for 
Commandant Michael Mallin. If I did 
not find the military moving, I was to 
remain at the end of the Green until I 
should see our men coming in to take 
possession. There were no soldiers in 
sight; only a policeman standing at the 
far end of the Green doing nothing. 
He paid no attention to me; I was only 
a girl on a bicycle. But I watched him 
closely. It was impossible to believe 
that neither the police nor the military 
authorities were on guard. But this 
chap stood about idly and was the last 
95 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

policeman I saw until after the rising 
was over. They seemed to vanish from 
the streets of Dublin. Even to-day no 
one can tell you where they went. 

It was a great moment for me, as I 
stood there, when, between the budding 
branches of trees, I caught sight of men 
in dark green uniforms coming along in 
twos and threes to take up their position 
in and about the Green and at the cor- 
ners of streets leading into it. There 
were only thirty-six altogether, whereas 
the original plan had been for a hun- 
dred. That was one of the first effects 
of Eoin McNeill's refusal to join us. 
But behind them I could see, in the 
spring sunlight, those legions of Irish 
who made their fight against as heavy 
or heavier odds and who, though they 
died, had left us their dream to make 
real. Perhaps this time — 

At last all the men were standing 
96 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ready, awaiting the signal. In every 
part of Dublin similar small groups 
were waiting for the hour to strike. 
The revolution had begun,! 



97 



VI 

To the British, I am told, there was 
something uncanny about the sud- 
denness with which the important cen- 
ters of DubHn's Hfe were quietly seized 
at noon on Easter Monday by groups of 
calm, determined men in green uni- 
forms. 

They were not merely surprised ; they 
were frightened. The superstitious ele- 
ment in their fear was great, too. It 
had always been so. When Kitchener 
was drowned off the Irish coast, a man 
I know, an Irishman, spoke of it to an 
English soldier. 

*'Yes; you and your damned rosa- 
ries!" retorted the soldier, looking 
frightened even as he said it. 
98 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

The British seem to feel we are in 
league with unearthly powers against 
which they have no protection. On 
Easter Monday they believed that 
behind this sudden decision, as it ap- 
peared to them, something dark and 
sinister was lurking. How else would 
we dare to revolt against the British 
Empire? It was as if our men were 
not flesh and blood, but spirits sum- 
moned up by their own bad conscience 
to take vengeance for many centuries of 
misrule. It must have been some such 
feeling that accounted for the way they 
lost, at the very outset, all their usual 
military calm and ruthlessness. 

We recognized this feeling, and it 
made our men stronger in spirit. We 
were convinced of the justice of our 
cause, convinced that even dying was a 
small matter compared with the priv- 
ilege we now shared of fighting for that 
99 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

cause. Besides, there was no traitor in 
our ranks. No one had whispered a 
word of our plans to the British author- 
ities. That is one reason why our 
memory of Easter Week has in it some- 
thing finer than the memory of any 
other rising in the past. You must 
bear in mind that the temptation to 
betray the rising must have been just 
as strong, that it had in it just as much 
guarantee of security for the future, as 
heretofore. Yet no one yielded to this 
temptation. Even more amazing was 
the fact that the authorities had not paid 
any heed to those utterances which for 
months past had been highly seditious. 
For instance, here is what Padraic 
Pearse stated openly in one of his 
articles : 

I am ready. For years I have w^ted and 
prayed for this day. We have the most glori- 
ous opportunity that has ever presented itself 

lOO 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

of really asserting ourselves. Such an oppor- 
tunity will never come again. We have Ire- 
land's liberty in our hands. Or are w^e content 
to remain as slaves and idly watch the final ex- 
termination of the Gael? 

Nothing could be more outspoken or 
direct. When it is remembered that 
England's enemies have always been 
regarded as Ireland's allies; that an 
English war, wherever fought, is a sig- 
nal for us to rise once more, no mat- 
ter how many defeats we have suffered, 
it might have been supposed the British, 
stationed in such numbers in and around 
Dublin, would not have been put to sleep 
by what must have seemed, to the wary 
observer, an acute attack of openness 
and a vigorous interest in military 
affairs. There were some, of course, 
among the police and officials who made 
their reports of "highly seditious" meet- 
ings and writings, but I suppose the 

lOI 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

authorities did not believe we would 
strike. From America they learned of 
aid to come by ship when Igel's papers 
were seized by United States authori- 
ties. It may have been this information 
that put the English patrol-boats on 
their guard in Tralee Harbor. It even 
may have been thought that when that 
ship went down the rising was automat- 
ically ended. So it might have been 
had our revolt been ''made in Germany," 
but it must be remembered that it was 
the Irish who approached the Germans. 
Thus there was no anxiety in Dublin 
that Easter Monday except as to which 
horse would win the Fairview races. 

As soon as our men were in position 
in St. Stephen's Green, I rode off down 
Leeson Street toward the Grand Canal 
to learn if the British soldiers were now 
leaving Beggar's Bush or the Portobello 
barracks. Everything remained quiet. 

102 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

That signified to me that our men had 
taken possession of the post-office for 
headquarters and of all other premises 
decided on in the revised plan of strategy 
adapted to a much smaller army. 

The names of these places do not 
sound martial. Jacob's Biscuit Fac- 
tory, Boland's Bakery, Harcourt Street 
Railway Station, and Four Courts are 
common enough, but each had been 
chosen for the strategic advantage it 
would give those defending Dublin with 
a few men against a great number. 
The Dublin & Southeastern Railway 
yards, for example, gave control of the 
approach from Kingstown where, it was 
expected, the English coming over to 
Ireland would land. 

Again I was sent out to learn if the 
Harcourt Street Station had been occu- 
pied by our men. This had been done, 
and already telegraph wires there, as 
103 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

well as elsewhere, had been cut to 
isolate Dublin. Telephone wires were 
cut, too, but one was overlooked. By 
that wire word of the rising reached 
London much sooner than otherwise 
would have been the case. But here 
again, the wonder is not that something 
had been overlooked, but that so much 
was accomplished. By the original 
plan, volunteers were told ofif to do this 
wire-cutting and the hundred and one 
things necessary to a revolt taking place 
in a city like Dublin. When this work 
was redistributed to one third the 
original number of men, it was hard to 
be certain that those who had never 
drilled for the kind of task assigned 
them could do it at all. This insurrec- 
tion had been all but rehearsed, during 
those months when it was being worked 
out on paper, by daily and weekly drills. 
Upon my return, I found our men 
104 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

intrenching themselves in St. Stephen's 
Green. All carried tools with which to 
dig themselves in, and shrubbery was 
used to protect the trenches. Motor- 
cars and drays passing the Green were 
commandeered, too, to form a barricade. 
Much to the bewilderment of their occu- 
pants, who had no warning that any- 
thing w^as amiss in Dublin, the men in 
green uniforms would signal them to 
stop. Except in one instance, they did 
so quickly enough. Then they were 
told to get out. An experienced chauf- 
feur among our men would jump in at 
once and drive the car to a position 
where it was needed. The occupants 
would stand for a moment aghast, 
then take to their heels. One drayman 
refused his cart and persisted in his 
refusal, not believing it when our men 
told him this was war. He was shot. 
Two British officers were taken prison- 
105 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ers in one of the autos. We could not 
afford men to stand guard over them, 
but we took good care of them. After- 
ward they paid us the tribute of saying 
that we obeyed all the rules of war. 

Commandant Mallin gave me my 
first despatch to carry to headquarters 
at the general post-office. As I crossed 
O'Connell Street, I had to ride through 
great crowds of people who had 
gathered to hear Padraic Pearse read 
the proclamation of the republic at the 
foot of Nelson's Pillar. They had to 
scatter when the Fifth Lancers — the 
first of the military forces to learn that 
insurgents had taken possession of the 
post-office — rode in among them to at- 
tack the post-office. 

Nothing can give one a better idea of 

how demoralized the British were by 

the first news of the rising than to learn 

that they sent cavalry to attack a forti- 

io6 



POBLAC HT NA H E IREAWN. 

THE PROVISIONAL GOVEKNeNT 

OF THE 

IRISH REPUBLIC 

TO THE FEOFLE OF IRELAND. 

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN In the name of God and of the dead generations 
from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood. Ireland, through us, summons 
her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. 

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary 
organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military 
organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently 
perfected her discipline, having resolutely 'waited for the right moment to reveal 
iisfclf. she now seizes that moment, and. supported by her exiled children lo America 
and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own stfengih. she 
strikes in full confidence of victory. 

We declare the right ol the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and lo 
the unfettered control of Irish destinies, lo be sovereign and indefeasible. The long 
usurpation of that nghi by a foreign people and government has not exiinguished Iho 
right, nor can n ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people, la 
every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and 
sovereignty six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted il In 
arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in ihe faca 
of ibe world, we hereby proclaim the Irisn Republic as a Sovereign Independent Stale, 
and we pledge our lives and ihe lives of our comrades-in-arms lo the cause of its freedom, 
of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. 

The Irish Republic is entitled to. and hereby claims, the allegiance 'of every 
Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal 
rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, ahd declares its resolve lo pursue 
Ihe happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all 
the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered 
by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past. 
Dntil our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a 
permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and 
elected by Ihe sulTrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby 
constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for 
the people. 

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under ths protection of the Most High Cod, 
Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that 
cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour 
the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children 
to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny 
to which it is called, 

signed on BehaK ot ihe Provisional Ooicrnmenl. 

THOMAS J. CLARKE. 
SEAN Mac DIARMADA. THOMAS MacDONAGH, 
P. H. PBARSE. EAMONN CEANNT, 

JAMES CONNOLLY. JOSEPH PLUNKETT. 

THE HH(KL.\M.\TU)N t>K 1 HK IRISH Hb PUBLIC 
(AH of its sijiiier.s were executed) 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

fied building. Men on horseback stood 
no chance against rifle-fire from the 
windows of the post-office. It must be 
said in extenuation, however, that it 
probably was because this cavalry de- 
tachment had just convoyed some am- 
munition-wagons to a place not far from 
O'Connell Street, and so were sent to 
"scatter" men who, they supposed, could 
be put to flight by the mere appearance 
of regulars on horseback. 

When I reached the open space in 
front of the post-office, I saw two or 
three men and horses lying in the street, 
killed by the first volley from the build- 
ing. It was several days before these 
horses were taken away, and there was 
something in the sight of the dumb 
beasts that hurt me every time I had to 
pass them. It may sound harsh when I 
say that the thought of British soldiers 
being killed in the same way did not 
IC9 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

awaken similar feelings. That is be- 
cause for many centuries we have been 
harassed by men in British uniform. 
They have become to us symbols of a 
power that seems to delight in tyranny. 

Even while I was cycling toward the 
post-office, the crowd had reassembled 
to watch the raising of the flag of 
the Irish Republic. As the tricolor — 
green, white, and orange — appeared 
above the roof of the post-office, a salute 
was fired. A few days later, while it 
was still waving, James Connolly wrote : 
**For the first time in seven hundred 
years the flag of a free Ireland floats 
triumphantly over Dublin City!" 

Mr. Connolly and a few of his officers 
came out to look at it as it waved up 
there against the sky. I saw an old 
woman go up to him and, bending her 
knee, kiss his hand. Indeed, the people 
loved and trusted him. 
no 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Inside the post-office our men were 
busy putting things to right after the 
lancers' attack. They were getting 
ready for prolonged resistance. Win- 
dow-panes were smashed, and barri- 
cades set up to protect men who soon 
would be shooting from behind them. 
Provisions were brought over from 
Liberty Hall, where they had long been 
stored against this day. But what im- 
pressed me most was the way the men 
went at it, as though this was the usual 
sort of thing to be doing and all in the 
day's work. There was no sign of ex- 
citement, but there was a tenseness, a 
sense of expectancy, a kind of exalta- 
tion, that was almost more than I could 
bear. 

I delivered my despatch, and was 
given another to carry back to Com- 
mandant Mallin. Crowds were still in 
O'Connell Street when I left on my 
III 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

errand. They were always there when 
bullets were not flying, and always 
seemed in sympathy with the men in the 
post-office. I found this same sym- 
pathy all over the city wherever I went. 
Even when men would not take guns 
and join us, they were friendly. 

The soldiers from Portobello bar- 
racks were sent out twice on Monday to 
attack our position in St. Stephen's 
Green. The first time was at noon, 
before we were completely intrenched. 
They had gone only as far as Portobello 
Bridge, but a few rods from the bar- 
racks, when they were fired on from the 
roof of Davies's public-house just the 
other side of the bridge. Our rifle-fire 
was uninterrupted, and a number of the 
soldiers fell. They probably thought 
they were dealing with a considerable 
force, for they did not advance until the 
firing ceased or until word was brought 

112 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

to the three men on the roof that we 
were securely intrenched. Even then 
they did not come on to attack us, but 
went somewhere else in the city. 

At six o'clock that evening, just when 
it was beginning to grow dusk, on my 
way back from the post-office I noticed 
that the crowd of curious civilians who 
had been hanging about the Green all 
day had quite disappeared. The next 
thing I saw was two persons hurrying 
away from the Green. These were 
Town Councilor Partridge and the 
countess. They came to a halt in the 
street just ahead of me. Then I saw 
the British soldiers coming up Har- 
court Street! 

The countess stood motionless, wait- 
ing for them to come near. She was a 
lieutenant in the Irish Volunteers and, 
in her officer's uniform and black hat 
with great plumes, looked most impres- 
113 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

sive. At length she raised her gun to 
her shoulder — it was an "automatic'* 
over a foot long, which she had con- 
verted into a short rifle by taking out 
the wooden holster and using it as a 
stock — and took aim. Neither she nor 
Partridge noticed me as I came vip be- 
hind them. I was quite close when they 
fired. The shots rang out at the same 
moment, and I saw the two officers lead- 
ing the column drop to the street. As 
the countess was taking aim again, the 
soldiers, without firing a shot, turned 
and ran in great confusion for their 
barracks. The whole company fled as 
fast as they could from tzvo people, one 
of them a woman! When you con-i 
sider, however, that for years these 
soldiers had been going about Dublin 
as if they owned it; that now they did 
not know from what house or street 
corner they might be fired upon by men 
114 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

in green uniforms, it is not to be won- 
dered at that they were temporarily 
demorahzed. 

As we went back to the Green, Madam 
told me of the attempt made that morn- 
ing by herself, Sean Connolly, and ten 
others to enter Dublin Castle and plant 
the flag of the Irish republic on the roof 
of that stronghold of British power in 
Ireland. There always is a consider- 
able military force housed in the castle, 
but so completely were they taken by 
surprise that for a few moments it 
seemed as if the small group would suc- 
ceed in entering. It was only when 
their leader, Sean Connolly, was shot 
dead that the attempt was abandoned. 
It seemed to me particularly fitting that 
Madam had been a member of this 
party, for she belonged by "right of 
birth" to those who always were invited 
to social affairs at the castle. Yet she 
115 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

had long refused to accept these invita- 
tions, and had taken the side of those 
who hoped for the ukimate withdrawal 
of those Dublin Castle hosts. 

Immediately after this gallant at- 
tempt, which might have succeeded had 
it taken place on Sunday with the num- 
ber of men originally intended, Madam 
returned to St. Stephen's Green and 
alone and single-handed took possession 
of the College of Surgeons. This is a 
big, square, granite building on the west 
side of the Green. It was, as we later 
discovered, impregnable. For all im- 
pression they made, the machine-gun 
bullets with which the British soldiers 
peppered it for five days might have 
been dried peas. 

The countess, fortunately, had met 

with no resistance. She walked up the 

steps, rang the bell, and, when no one 

answered, fired into the lock and 

ii6 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

entered. The flag we flew from the 
roof of the building was a small one I 
had brought on my bicycle from head- 
quarters. 



117 



VII 

WE were all happy that night as 
we camped in St. Stephen's 
Green. Despite the handicap we were 
under through lack of men, almost 
everything was going our way. It was 
a cold, damp night. The first-aid and 
despatch-girls of our command went 
into a summer-house for shelter. It 
had no walls, but there was a floor to 
lie upon, and a roof. I slept at once and 
slept heavily. 

Madam was not so fortunate. She 
was too tired and excited to sleep. In- 
stead, she walked about, looking for 
some sheltered place and, to get out of 
the wind, tried lying down in one of the 
trenches. But the ground was much 
ii8 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

too chilly, so she walked about until she 
noticed the motor-car of her friend, Dr. 
Katherine Lynn, seized that morning 
for the barricade. She climbed in, 
found a rug, and went to sleep in com- 
parative comfort. When morning came 
she could not forgive herself for having 
slept there all night while the rest of us 
remained outdoors. She had intended 
to get up after an hour or two of it and 
make one of us take her place. She did 
not waken, however, till she heard the 
hailing of machine-gun bullets on the 
roof of the car. The girls in the sum- 
mer-house, with the exception of my- 
self, were awakened at the same moment 
in the same way, and ran for safety 
behind one of the embankments. It 
seems the British had taken possession 
of a hotel at one side of the Green — the 
Hotel Shelbourne — and had placed a 
machine-gun on the roof. At four 
119 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

o'clock in the morning they began fir- 
ing. 

The chill I was having woke me, but 
I quickly followed the others to their 
hiding-place. From the first we were 
aware that had we taken possession of 
all buildings around the Green, accord- 
ing to our original plan, this morning 
salute of the British would have been 
impossible. As it was, our intrench- 
ments and barricades proved of no avail. 
We realized at once we should have to 
evacuate the Green and retire into the 
College of Surgeons. 

Commandant Mallin sent me with a 
despatch to headquarters. He recog- 
nized immediately that a regiment could 
not hold the Green against a machine- 
gun on a tall building that could rake 
our position easily. 

As soon as I returned, I was sent away 
again to bring in sixteen men guarding 

120 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the Leeson Street bridge. If we aban- 
doned the Green before they could join 
us, they would be cut off and in great 
danger. As I rode along on my bicycle, 
I had my first taste of the risks of street- 
fighting. Soldiers on top of the Hotel 
Shelbourne aimed their machine-gun 
directly at me. Bullets struck the 
wooden rim of my bicycle wheels, 
puncturing it; others rattled on the 
metal rim or among the spokes. I knew 
one might strike me at any moment, so 
I rode as fast as I could. My speed 
saved my life, and I was soon out of 
range around a corner. I was not 
exactly frightened nor did I feel aware 
of having shown any special courage. 
My anxiety for the men I was to bring 
in filled my mind, for though I was out 
of range, unless we could find a round- 
about way to the College of Surgeons 
seventeen of us would be under fire. 

121 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

To make matters worse, the men were 
on foot. 

After I reached this group and gave 
the order for their return, I scouted 
ahead up streets I knew would bring us 
back safely to the college, unless already 
guarded by the British. It was while 
I was riding ahead of them that I had 
fresh evidence of the friendliness of the 
people. Two men presently approached 
me. They stepped out into the street 
and said quietly: 

"All is safe ahead." 

I rode back, told the guard, and we 
moved on more rapidly. At another 
spot a woman leaned out of her window 
just as I was passing. ''You are losing 
your revolver," she called to me. 

She may have saved my life by that 
warning, for my revolver had torn its 
way through the pocket of my raincoat, 
and, in another moment, would have 

122 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

fallen to the ground. Had it been dis- 
charged, the result might have been 
fatal. 

As we came to the College of Sur- 
geons and were going in by a side door, 
the men were just retiring from the 
Green. Since every moment counted, I 
had ridden ahead to report to Com- 
mandant Mallin, and while he stood 
listening to me, a bullet whizzed through 
his hat. He took it off, looked at it 
without comment, and put it on again. 
Evidently the machine-gun was still at 
work. 

One of our boys was killed before we 
got inside the College of Surgeons. 
Had the British gunners been better 
trained for their task, we might have 
lost more, for we were completely at 
their mercy from the moment they began 
to fire at dawn until the big door of the 
college closed, and we took up the de- 
123 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

fense of our new position in the great 
stone fortress. 

Every time I left the college, I was 
forced to run the gauntlet of this 
machine-gun. I blessed the enemy's 
bad marksmanship several times a day. 
To be sure, they tried hard enough to 
hit something. Once that day I saw 
them shooting at our first-aid girls, who 
made excellent targets in their white 
dresses, with large red crosses on them. 
It was a miracle that none of them was 
wounded. Bullets passed through one 
girl's skirt, and another girl had the heel 
of her shoe shot off. If I myself had 
not seen this happen, I could not have 
believed that British soldiers would dis- 
obey the rules of war concerning the 
Red Cross. 

Mr. Connolly had issued orders that 
no soldier was to be shot who did not 
have arms, and he did not consider the 
124 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

side-arms they always carried as 
"arms." My revolver had been given 
me for self-defense in case I fell into 
the hands of any soldiers. I confess 
that, though I never used it, I often felt 
tempted when I saw British soldiers 
going along in twos and threes, bent on 
shooting any of our men. I was not in 
uniform, however, and had had orders 
not to shoot except thus clothed and so 
a member of the Republican Army. 

Some of the streets I had to ride 
through were as quiet and peaceful as if 
there was no thought of revolution in 
Dublin, but in others I could hear now 
and then scattered shots from around 
some corner. It was more than likely 
that snipers were trying to hold up a 
force of British on their way to attack 
one of our main positions. Sometimes 
I would hear the rattle of a machine- 
gun, and this warned me that I was 
125 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

approaching a house where the enemy 
was raking a position held by our men. 
Generally, however, it was the complete 
and death-like emptiness of a street that 
warned me I was close to a scene of hot 
fighting. This was not always so, for 
there were times when the curiosity of 
the crowd got the better of its caution, 
and it would push dangerously near the 
shooting. 

Several days elapsed before the people 
of Dublin became fully aware of the 
meaning of what was going on. Riots 
are not rare, and this might well seem 
to many of them only rioting on a 
large scale, with some new and interest- 
ing features. The poor of Dublin have 
never been appeased with bread or cir- 
cuses by the British authorities. They 
have had to be content with starvation 
and an occasional street disturbance. 
But little bv little, as I rode along, I 
126 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

could detect a change in attitude. Some 
became craven and disappeared; in 
others, it seemed that at last their souls 
might come out of hiding and face the 
day. 

The spirit at the post-office was 
always the same — quiet, cheerful, and 
energetic. I used to stand at the head 
of the great central staircase waiting 
for answers to my despatches and could 
see the leaders as they went to and fro 
through the corridor. Padraic Pearse 
impressed me by his natural air of com- 
mand. He was serious, but not trou- 
bled, not even when he had to ask for 
men from the Citizen Army to eke out 
the scant numbers of his Volunteers for 
some expedition. No one had thought 
it would be that way, for the Volunteers 
were originally two to one compared 
with the Citizen Army. Recruits were 
coming in every day, but at the most 
127 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

there were not fifteen hundred men 
against twenty thousand British sol- 
diers stationed in or near Dublin. 

Whenever there came a lull in busi- 
ness or fighting, the men would begin to 
sing either rebel songs or those old lays 
dear to Irishmen the world over. And 
sometimes they knelt in prayer, Prot- 
estants and Catholics side by side. 
From the very beginning there was a 
sense of the religious character in what 
we were doing. This song and prayer 
at the post-ofiice were all natural, devoid 
of self-consciousness. A gay song 
would follow a solemn prayer, and 
somehow was not out of harmony with 
it. 

One source of inspiration at the post- 
ofiice was ''old Tom Clarke," who had 
served fifteen years for taking part in 
the rising of sixty-seven. His pale, 
worn face showed the havoc wrought 
128 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

by that long term in an English prison, 
but his spirit had not been broken. 

There was Jo Plunkett, too, pale and 
weak, having come directly from the 
hospital where he had just undergone 
an operation. But he knew what pres- 
tige his name would lend to this move- 
ment—a name famous for seven hun- 
dred years in Irish history. He looked 
like death, and he met death a few days 
later at the hands of the English. 

I talked about explosives one day with 
Sean McDermott and we went together 
to consult a wounded chemist in a rear 
room to find out what could be done with 
chemicals we had found at the College 
of Surgeons. Sean McDermott was 
like a creature from another planet who 
had brought his radiance with him to 
this one. Every one felt this and loved 
him for the courage and sweetness he 
put into all he did. 

129 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

The O'Rahilly was another of the 
striking figures at the post-office. He 
was known as one of the handsomest 
men in Ireland, and, in addition to being 
head of a famous old clan, had large 
estates. He had given much property 
to the cause, and now was risking his 
life for it. He was killed on the last 
day of the fighting as he led a sortie into 
the street at one side of the post-office. 
His last words were, ''Good-by and 
good luck to you!" He said those 
words to British prisoners he was set- 
ting free because the post-office had 
caught fire and the game was up. They 
afterward told of his kindness and care 
for them at a moment when he himself 
was in the greatest possible danger. 

I can pass anywhere for a Scotch 

girl, — I have often had to since the 

rising, — and friends will tell you I am 

hard-headed and practical, without the 

130 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

least trace of mysticism. Yet, when- 
ever I was in general headquarters in 
the post-office, I felt, despite common- 
place surroundings and the din of fight- 
ing, an exalted calm that can be possible 
only where men are giving themselves 
unreservedly and with clear conscience 
to a great cause. 



131 



VIII 

SINGING "Soldiers are we whose 
lives are pledged to Ireland," we 
had withdrawn from St. Stephen's 
Green into the College o£ Surgeons. 
Only one of our men had been killed, yet 
this was a retreat, and we knew it. If 
only we had had enough men to take 
possession of the Shelbourne Hotel, we 
need not have yielded the Green. As it 
was, we wasted no time in mourning, 
but went to work at once to make our- 
selves ready for a siege that might last 
no one knew how long. 

Under orders from Commandant 
Mallin, some of the men began to cut 
through the walls into adjoining build- 
ings. Others went up on the roof to 
132 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

use their rifles against the British sol- 
diers on top of the Shelbourne. Madam 
went about everywhere, seeking to find 
anything that could be of use to us. 
She discovered sixty-seven rifles, with 
fifteen thousand rounds of cartridges; 
also bandoliers and haversacks. All 
this had belonged, no doubt, to the train- 
ing corps of the College of Surgeons, 
and would have been used against us had 
we not reached the building first. 

On the ground floor of the big build- 
ing were lecture-rooms and a museum; 
up-stairs other class-rooms, laborator- 
ies, and the library. On the third floor 
were the caretaker's rooms and a kitchen 
where our first-aid and despatch-girls 
took possession and cooked for the 
others as long as anything remained to 
cook. Lastly came the garret up under 
the roof. To shoot from the roof itself 
quickly became impossible, since our 
133^ 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

men were easy targets for the gunners 
on the Shelbourne. As soon as one of 
our boys was wounded, we knew they 
had our range, and decided to cut holes 
through and directly under the sloping 
roof. Here we could shoot in perfect 
safety while remaining unseen. 

On Wednesday there was little des- 
patch-bearing to do, so I stood around 
watching the men up there at work. 
The countess realized my impatience to 
be doing my bit, also my hesitation at 
putting myself forward to ask for per- 
mission. Without saying anything to 
me, she went to Commandant Mallin 
and told him she thought I could be of 
use under the roof. He gave his per- 
mission at once, and she brought me the 
answer. 

Madam had had a fine uniform of 
green moleskin made for me. With 
her usual generosity, she had mine made 
134 




BELT lUICKLE 




■l:^ ^~ 




STAMPS ISSUED BY THE IRISH REIHIBMC 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

of better material than her own. It 
consisted of kneebreeches, belted coat, 
and puttees. I slipped into this uni- 
form, climbed up astride the rafters, 
and was assigned a loophole through 
which to shoot. It was dark there, full 
of smoke and the din of firing, but it was 
good to be in action. I could look across 
the tops of trees and see the British sol- 
diers on the roof of the Shelbourne. I 
could also hear their shot hailing against 
the roof and wall of our fortress, for in 
truth this building was just that. More 
than once I saw the man I aimed at fall. 
To those who have been following the 
Great War, reading of thousands and 
hundreds of thousands attacking one 
another in open battle or in mile-long 
trench-warfare, this exchange of shots 
between two buildings across a Dublin 
green may seem petty. But to us there 
could be nothing greater. Every shot 
137 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

we fired was a declaration to the world 
that Ireland, a small country but large 
in our hearts, was demanding her inde- 
pendence. We knew that all over Dub- 
lin, perhaps by this time all over Ireland, 
other groups like ours were filled with 
the same intensity, the same determina- 
tion, to make the Irish Republic, no 
matter how short-lived, a reality of 
which history would have to take 
account. Besides, the longer we could 
keep our tricolor flying over the College 
of Surgeons, the greater the chance that 
Irish courage would respond and we 
should gain recruits. 

Whenever I was called down to carry 
a despatch, I took of¥ my uniform, put 
on my gray dress and hat, and went out 
the side door of the college with my mes- 
sage. As soon as I returned, I slipped 
back into my uniform and joined the 
firing-squad. 

138 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

There were a good many of the 
Fianna boys in the college with us. As 
usual, their allegiance to Madam would 
not let them leave her. One of them, 
Tommie Keenan of Camden Row, was 
only twelve years old, but was invalu- 
able. He would go out for food and 
medicine and, because he was so little, 
never attracted attention, though he 
wore his green Fianna shirt under his 
jacket. On Tuesday he came to the 
conclusion, perhaps with Madam's aid, 
that he ought to go home and tell his par- 
ents what he was doing. Comman- 
dant Mallin advised him, just before he 
left, to take off his green shirt and not 
wear it again for a while. It was a day 
or more before he returned, because his 
father had locked him in his room. We 
sympathized with the father, for that 
was just what we had expected him to 
do. But when a friend came along who 
139 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

promised to keep guard over Tommy if 
he was allowed to go for a walk, the 
boy's chance came. Eluding this friend, 
he ran the most roundabout way until 
he arrived where he felt ''duty" called 
him. 

The boy already referred to as nearly 
blind was with us, too. He pleaded so 
hard to be allowed to use a rifle that the 
men finally put him at a loophole, where 
he breathlessly fired shot after shot in 
the direction of the hotel. Maybe the 
prayers he murmured gave him suc- 
cess. 

Our rations were short, but I do not 
remember that any one complained. I 
for one had no appetite for more than a 
slice of bread or two a day, with a cup 
of bouillon made from the cubes laid in 
as part of our necessary ration. The 
two captured British officers had their 
meals regularly whether any one else 
140 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 
ate or not, and seemed grateful for 

it. 

Every evening fighting would quiet 
down, and the boys and men — about a 
hundred, now, through recruits who had 
joined us— would gather in the largest 
lecture-hall to sing under the leadership 
of Jo Connolly, whose brother Sean had 
fallen the first day in front of Dublin 
Castle. I can hear them even now : 

"Armed for the battle. 
Kneel we before Thee, 
Bless Thou our banners, 
God of the brave ! 
'Ireland is living' — 
Shout we triumphant, 
'Ireland is waking — 
Hands grasp the sword !' " 

They were singing this chant, written 
by the countess and set to some Polish 
revolutionary air, on Wednesday even- 
ing. I was up-stairs, studying a map of 
141 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

our surroundings and trying to find a 
way by which we could dislodge the 
soldiers from the roof of the Hotel 
Shelbourne. When Commandant Mal- 
lin came in, I asked him if he would let 
me go out with one man and try to throw 
a bomb attached to an eight-second fuse 
through the hotel window. I knew 
there was a bow-window on the side 
farthest from us, which was not likely 
to be guarded. We could use our 
bicycles and get away before the bomb 
exploded, — that is, if we were quick 
enough. At any rate, it was worth try- 
ing, whatever the risk. 

Commandant Mallin agreed the plan 
was a good one, but much too danger- 
ous. I pointed out to him that it had 
been my speed which had saved me so 
far from machine-gun fire on the hotel 
roof. It was not that the British were 
doing us any real harm in the college, 
142 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

but it was high time to take the aggres- 
sive, for success would hearten the men 
in other **forts" who were not having as 
safe a time of it. He finally agreed, 
though not at all willingly, for he did 
not want to let a woman run this sort of 
risk. My answer to that argument was 
that we had the same right to risk our 
lives as the men ; that in the constitution 
of the Irish Republic, women were on an 
equality with men. For the first time in 
history, indeed, a constitution had been 
written that incorporated the principle 
of equal suffrage. But the Command- 
ant told me there was another task to be 
accomplished before the hotel could be 
bombed. That was to cut off the retreat 
of a British force which had planted a 
machine-gun on the flat roof of Univer- 
sity Church. It was against our rules 
to use any church, Protestant or Cath- 
olic, in our defense, no matter what ad- 
143 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

vantage that might give us. But this 
church, close at hand, had been occu- 
pied by the British and was cutting us 
off from another command with whom 
it was necessary to keep in communica- 
tion. In order to cut off the retreat of 
these soldiers, it would be necessary to 
burn two buildings. I asked the Com- 
mandant to let me help in this undertak- 
ing. He consented, and gave me four 
men to help fire one building, while 
another party went out to fire the other. 
It meant a great deal to me that he 
should trust me with this piece of work, 
and I felt elated. While I changed once 
more into my uniform, for the work of 
war can only be done by those who wear 
its dress, I could still hear them singing: 

"Who fights for Ireland, 
God guide his blows home ! 
Who dies for Ireland, 
God give him peace! 

144 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Knowing our cause just, 
March we victorious, 
Giving our hearts' blood 
Ireland to free !" 



145 



IX 

IT took only a few moments to reach 
the building we were to set afire. 
Councilor Partridge smashed the glass 
door in the front of a shop that occupied 
the ground floor. He did it with the 
butt of his rifle and a flash followed. It 
had been discharged! I rushed past 
him into the doorway of the shop, call- 
ing to the others to come on. Behind 
me came the sound of a volley, and I fell. 
It was as I had on the instant divined. 
That flash had revealed us to the enemy. 
"It 's all over," I muttered, as I felt 
myself falling. But a moment later, 
when I knew I was not dead, I was sure 
I should pull through. Before another 
volley could be fired, Mr. Partridge 
146 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

lifted and carried me into the street. 
There on the sidewalk lay a dark figure 
in a pool of blood. It was Fred Ryan, a 
mere lad of seventeen, who had wanted 
to come with us as one of the party of 
four. 

"We must take him along," I said. 

But it was no use; he was dead. 

With help, I managed to walk to the 
corner. Then the other man who had 
stopped behind to set the building afire 
caught up with us. Between them they 
succeeded in carrying me back to the 
College of Surgeons. 

As we came into the vestibule, Jo Con- 
nolly was waiting with his bicycle, ready 
to go out with me to bomb the hotel. 
His surprise at seeing me hurt was as 
if I had been out for a stroll upon peace- 
ful streets and met with an accident. 

They laid me on a large table and cut 
away the coat of my fine, new uniform. 
147 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

I cried over that. Then they found I 
had been shot in three places, my right 
side under the arm, my right arm, and in 
the back on my right side. Had I not 
turned as I went through that shop- 
door to call to the others, I would have 
got all three bullets in my back and 
lungs and surely been done for. 

They had to probe several times to get 
the bullets, and all the while Madam 
held my hand. But the probing did not 
hurt as much as she expected it would. 
My disappointment at not being able to 
bomb the Hotel Shelbourne was what 
made me unhappy. They wanted to 
send me to the hospital across the Green, 
but I absolutely refused to go. So the 
men brought in a cot, and the first-aid 
girls bandaged me, as there was no get- 
ting a doctor that night. What really 
did distress me was my cough and the 
pain in my chest. When I tried to keep 
148 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

from coughing, I made a queer noise in 
my throat and noticed every one around 
me look frightened. 

"It 's no death-rattle," I explained, 
and they all had to laugh, — that is, all 
laughed except Commandant Mallin. 
He said he could not forgive himself as 
long as he lived for having let me go 
out on that errand. But he did not live 
long, poor fellow ! I tried to cheer him 
by pointing out that he had in reality 
saved my life, since the bombing plan 
was much more dangerous. 

Soon after I was brought in, the 
countess and Councilor Partridge dis- 
appeared. When she returned to me, 
she said very quietly : 

''You are avenged, my dear." 

It seems they had gone out to where 
Fred Ryan lay, and Partridge, to at- 
tract the fire of the soldiers across the 
street in the Sinn Fein Bank, had 
149 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

stooped over the dead boy to lift him. 
There were only two soldiers and they 
both fired. That gave Madam a chance 
to sight them. She fired twice and 
killed both. 

They tell me that all next day I was 
delirious and lay moaning and talking 
incoherently. It was not the bullets 
that brought me to this pass, but pneu- 
monia. Even so I am glad I was there 
and not at a hospital. Later a doctor 
who was summoned made the mistake of 
using too much corrosive sublimate on 
my wounds, and for once I knew what 
torture is. The mistake took all the 
skin off my side and back. But Madam 
is a natural nurse. Among her friends 
she was noted for her desire to care for 
them if they fell ill. Some one was al- 
most always in bed at Surrey House; 
some friend whose eyes might be trou- 
bling her to whom the countess would 
150 



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PEARSE S LAST PROCLAMATION 

Written under shell and shrapnel lire. (His marvelous hand- 
writing is duo to his in isterv of the Gaelic si-ript) 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

read aloud or apply soothing applica- 
tions ; a Fianna boy, or an actress from 
the Abbey Theater who needed to build 
up her nerves. Thus I was in good 
hands, and besides, following my in- 
stinct, I ate nothing for the next three 
days, but drank quantities of water. 

Once a day they allowed me visitors. 
Every one who came to my room was 
confident that things were going well. 
That we were isolated from other 
"forts" and even from headquarters did 
not necessarily mean they were losing 
ground. We were holding out, and our 
spirits rose high. We believed, too, 
that by this time the Volunteers outside 
Dublin had risen. We could not know 
that, even where they had joined the 
rising on Easter Monday, the loss of 
one day had given the British enough 
time to be on guard, so that in no 
instance could our men enter the bar- 
153 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

racks and seize arms as originally 
planned. 

While I lay there, I could hear the 
booming of big guns. All of us be- 
lieved it was the Germans attacking the 
British on the water. There had been 
a rumor that German submarines would 
come into the fight if they learned there 
was a chance of our winning it. I had 
heard that report the evening before the 
rising. Edmond Kent, one of the re- 
publican leaders, had been most confi- 
dent of our success, and when a friend 
asked him, "What if the British bring 
up their big guns?" he replied: 

"The moment they bring up their big 
guns, we win." 

He did not explain what he meant by 
this, but I took it that he expected out- 
side aid the minute the British, rec- 
ognizing our revolt as serious, gave us 
the dignity of combatants by using 
154 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

heavy artillery against us. Whatever 
he meant, the fact remains that when 
they took this action, they made us a 
''belligerent" in the world's eyes and 
gave us the excuse we could so well 
use — an appeal to the world court as a 
"small nation," for a place at the com- 
ing peace conference. 

Sunday morning one of the despatch- 
girls, white and scared because she had 
been escorted to our *'fort" by British 
soldiers, came from headquarters to in- 
form Commandant Mallin that a gen- 
eral surrender had been decided on. 
The Commandant and Madam were in 
my room at the time, and Madam in- 
stantly grew pale. 

"Surrender?" she cried. "We'll 
never surrender!" 

Then she begged the Commandant, 
who could make the decision for our di- 
vision, not to think of giving in. It 
155. 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

would be better, she said, for all of us to 
be killed at our posts. I felt as she did 
about it, but the girl who had brought 
the despatch became more and more ex- 
cited, saying that the soldiers outside 
had threatened to ''blow her little head 
off" if she did not come out soon with 
the word they wanted. Possibly they 
suspected any Irish girl would be more 
likely to urge resistance than surrender. 

Commandant Mallin, to quiet us, I 
suppose, said he would not surrender 
unless forced to do so. But he must 
have decided to give in at once, for in 
less than an hour an ambulance came to 
take me to St. Vincent's Hospital, just 
across the Green. 

As they carried me down-stairs, our 
boys came out to shake my hand. I 
urged them again and again to hold out. 
As I said good-by to Commandant Mal- 
lin, I had a feeling I should never see 

156 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

him again. Not that it entered my 
head for a moment that he would be ex- 
ecuted by the British. Despite all our 
wrongs and their injustices, I did not 
dream of their killing prisoners of war. 

I felt no such dread concerning the 
countess, though our last words together 
were about her will. I had witnessed it, 
and she had slipped it in the lining of 
my coat. I was to get it to her family 
at the earliest possible moment. It was 
fortunate that I did. 

My departure was the first move in 
the surrender. That afternoon all the 
revolutionists gave up their arms to the 
British in St. Patrick's Square. 



157 



X 

THOSE first two weeks in St. Vin- 
cent's Hospital were the blackest 
of my life. In that small, white room 
I was, at first, as much cut off as though 
in my grave. I had fever, and the doc- 
tors and nurses were more worried over 
my penumonia than over my wounds, 
though every time they dressed them I 
suffered from the original treatment 
with corrosive sublimate. My greatest 
anxiety, however, was because I could 
get no word to my mother in Glasgow. 
I knew she would think I had been 
killed. 

That was just what happened. The 
first word she had received since the day 
I left home was that I was dead ; that I 
158 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

had been shot in the spine, and left ly- 
ing on the Dublin pavement for two 
days. The next rumor that reached her 
was that I was not dead, but paralyzed. 
The third report was that the British 
had sentenced me to fifteen years' im- 
prisonment. Had I not been wounded, 
the last would probably have been true. 

After two weeks I wrote a letter, and 
the doctor had it forwarded home for 
me. It had not been easy work writing 
it, for my right arm was the one that 
had been wounded. I knew, though, 
that unless she had word in my own 
handwriting, my mother might not be- 
lieve what she read. 

Presently news began to drift in to 
me of trials and executions. I could 
not get it through my head. Why were 
these men not treated as prisoners of 
war? We had obeyed all rules of war 
and surrendered as formally as any 
159 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

army ever capitulated. All my reports 
were of death ; nothing but death ! 

At dawn on May 3, the British shot 
Padraic Pearse, Thomas McDonagh, 
and old Tom Clarke. 

The following day they shot Joseph 
Plunkett, the brother of Padraic Pearse, 
and two other leaders, Daly and 
O'Hanrahan. 

The third day John McBride, a man 
known the world over for his stand in 
the Boer War, was shot to death. He 
was the only one killed that day, and we 
wondered why. What was this Brit- 
ish reasoning that determined who 
should go in company with his fellows 
and who should go alone? 

At length came the turn of 'the Coun- 
tess Markievicz. Because she was a 
woman, they commuted her death-sen- 
tence to penal servitude for life. I was 
very glad; but I knew that, since she 
160 



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Doing My Bit for Ireland 

had fought as one of them, she would 
rather have died with them. Penal 
servitude! Those words rang like a 
knell for one who was all energy, who 
needed people around her, who wanted 
to serve. 

The British did not shoot any one on 
Sunday. They let us meditate on all 
that the past week had done to our lead- 
ers. There is no torture so excruciating 
as suspense. It is the suspense which 
Ireland has had to endure for genera- 
tions that has weakened her more than 
any battles. How we have waited and 
waited! It has always been hard for 
us to believe we were not to realize our 
hopes. Even in these latter years dur- 
ing which Home Rule has loomed large 
before us, we have not suspected that, in 
the end, it would become only a parlia- 
mentary trick and a delusion. If any 
one had told me the Sunday before that 
i6i 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

all these men were to be shot, I should 
not have believed them. Our bitter be- 
lief has been forced upon us. 

On Monday the British began it 
again. This time it was Michael Mal- 
lin they stood against a wall and shot. 
I remembered how, when I was so ill at 
the College of Surgeons, he had been 
gentle with me. He always had tried 
to ease the discomforts of his men. 
You would never have guessed by look- 
ing at him, he was so quiet and re- 
strained, that he had been waiting 
twenty years for the day which would 
make him a commandant over Irish sol- 
diers. He told me that, as a boy of 
fourteen, he had enlisted in the British 
army to get experience with which to 
fight Great Britain. When he was sta- 
tioned in India, he said, he had lain 
awake night after night, planning how 
some day he could put his military 
163 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

knowledge at Ireland's service. Six 
days he served Ireland; eight days he 
lay in prison ; now he was dead ! 

Later his widow came to see me. She 
brought me the note-book he used when 
writing the despatches I carried. She 
brought me, besides, some small bits of 
Irish poplin he had woven himself. She 
did not break down ; she seemed exalted. 
It was the same with all the wives of 
those shot, and with the mother of Pa- 
draic and William Pearse. You would 
have thought they had been greatly 
honored, that their dignity was equal to 
bearing it. 

Yet they all had terrible stories of 
cruelty to tell me. Kilmainham Prison 
was a grim waiting-room for death. In 
addition, the court-martial never lasted 
long enough for any one to feel he had 
been fairly tried and judged. I heard 
all the prison sentences, over a hundred 
163 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

that first week ! Most of them were for 
long terms, and five for life. Councilor 
Partridge was given a fifteen-year sen- 
tence that afterward was commuted to 
ten. 

It is not the same thing to read of ex- 
ecutions and sentences in the press and 
to hear of them from the lips of friends, 
— the wives, mothers, and daughters of 
the men executed or sentenced for life. 
To feel we had failed in our purpose was 
enough to make us brood; but to know 
that never again would these men sing 
rebel songs together or tell of their 
hopes — 

At length Norah Connolly and her 
sister came to see me. They told me of 
their father's last hours; how, because 
of his wound that already had brought 
him close to death, he had to be strapped 
into a chair to face the firing-squad. I 
thought of gentle Mrs. Connolly saying 
164 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

good-by to her husband, knowing all the 
while what was about to take place! 

Some of the first-aid girls who had 
been in prison for fifteen days came to 
visit me, too. We compared notes. I 
learned then how Chris CafTrey had 
been stripped and searched by British 
soldiers to her shame, for she was a 
modest girl. But she had eaten her 
despatch before they dragged her off the 
street where she had been bicycling. I 
heard, too, how Chris had been almost 
prevented from reaching headquarters 
by a crowd of poor women gathered 
about the post-of^ce for their usual 
weekly "separation allowance." Their 
husbands were all fighting in France or 
Flanders for the British. They would 
not get their allowance this week, and 
were terror-stricken, crowding about the 
post-of^ce and crying and shouting 
hysterically. Chris, as we called Chris- 
165 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

tine, had to fire her revolver at the 
ground before they would make way for 
her. 

Next followed the story of Francis 
Sheehy Skeffington, one of the few men 
in Dublin we could go to for advice 
about the law when we had any plan to 
carry out. He had been shot without a 
trial, they said; without even knowing, 
when called out into the little courtyard, 
that he was about to be killed. And he 
had had nothing to do with the rising! 
He always had been against the use of 
force. When he was arrested, after a 
day spent in trying to get a committee of 
safety together because the police had 
disappeared, his wife did not even know 
where he was. She had no word of his 
death until a day after he was buried 
in quicklime, the burial of a criminal! 

Ah, how the stories of Belgian atroci- 
ties which we had heard from the lips 
1 66 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

of the Archbishop of Michlin when the 
Great War broke out, paled beside this 
one fortnight in Dublin! We did not 
know when it would end or how. There 
ensued a reign of terror in all Irish 
homes, whether the men or women had 
had anything to do with the rising or 
not. For both soldiers and police were 
now given power to arrest any one they 
pleased. Several hundred men were put 
in prison under no charge, nor were any 
charges ever preferred in many cases. 
The women, too! Helen Maloney 
and Dr. Katherine Lynn, whose motor 
Madam had used that night in St. Ste- 
phen's Green and whose bicycle I had 
been riding, were both arrested Easter 
Monday and taken to Dublin Castle. 
Miss Maloney was discovered a few 
hours later with the lock half off her 
door, her fingers bleeding pitifully from 
attempts to get out. Next they were 
167 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

taken to Kilmainham jail, where for 
fifteen days those two women, with 
eighty others, were kept in a room com- 
pletely lacking any sanitary arrange- 
ments. We used to shudder at stories 
of such deeds, which we then believed 
could happen only in Siberia. Dr. 
Lynn is famous for her surgical skill. 
She is one of the Irish doctors to whom 
the British send their worst war crip- 
ples for treatment, and is far more suc- 
cessful than they in treating such cases. 
Many visitors to Dublin have seen Miss 
Maloney on the stage of the Abbey 
Theater and recognized her talent. Dr. 
Lynn was deported to Bath; Miss Ma- 
loney was sent to the Aylesbury Prison, 
and kept there a year. Never once dur- 
ing that time was any charge preferred 
against her. 

Little Tommy Keenan of Camden 
Row had, so he thought, the good for- 
i68 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

tune to be put in prison with sixty of the 
Fianna when our men surrendered the 
College of Surgeons. But, much to 
their chagrin, at the end of two weeks 
the boys were released. Did they 
scurry away to grow up into better Brit- 
ish subjects? Not at all! Tommy 
lined them up in front of the jail and 
led them off down the street singing 
'The Watch on the Rhine" at the top 
of their lungs. 

There was no end to the stories I 
heard as I lay there in the hospital. 
Stories of heroism and stories of dis- 
aster followed one another, each 
strengthening my belief that the courage 
and honor of the heroic days of Ireland 
were still alive in our hearts. Perhaps 
it is for this we should love our enemies : 
when they cleave with their swords the 
heart of a brave man, they lay bare the 
truth of life. 

169 



XI 

THERE came a day when I could no 
longer endure lying alone in my 
room, thinking of all that had happened 
for this reason or that. The nurses had 
been very kind to me. Some of them 
were in sympathy with the Sinn Fein 
movement, while all of them felt the 
horror of the executions. There were 
times when I could rise above this hor- 
ror and cheer them, too, by singing a 
rebel song. I had interested them, 
besides, in suffrage work we had been 
doing in Glasgow, where for several 
years eleven hundred militants had done 
picketing and the like. 

Finally, however, I persuaded them to 
let me move into the public ward, where 
170 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

I could see other women patients and 
talk a little. There were about twenty 
women and girls in the ward. Nine of 
them, who had nothing to do with the 
rising, had been wounded by British sol- 
diers. The nurses insisted this was ac- 
cidental. But the women themselves 
would not agree to that explanation, nor 
did I, for I recalled the Red Cross girls 
being shot at, — a thing I had seen with 
my own eyes. I told the nurses I had 
seen the British firing at our ambulances 
in the belief, no doubt, that we were do- 
ing what we had caught them at — trans- 
porting troops from one part of Dublin 
to another in ambulances. Sometimes I 
felt sorry to have to make those nurses 
see facts as they were, instead of helping 
them keep what few illusions still re- 
mained about their men in khaki. But 
I was glad when I could tell them what I 
had just heard of De Vallera's daring. 
171 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

With a handful of men, he had pre- 
vented two thousand of the famous 
Sherwood Foresters coming through 
lower Mount Street to attack one of our 
positions. Or, again, it did me good to 
relate the story of the seventeen-year- 
old lad who single-handed had captured 
a British general. The sequel to that 
tale, however, was not very cheerful, for 
the same general had sat at the court- 
martial, and gave the boy who before 
had had power of life and death over 
him, a ten year sentence. 

There were three women in the ward 
who had all been struck by the same 
bullet: a mother, her daughter, and a 
cousin. They had been friendly to the 
British soldiers, had fed them because, 
as the mother told me, her husband and 
son were in the trenches fighting for 
Great Britain. These three women had 
172 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

been at their window, looking with 
curiosity into the street, when the very 
soldier they had just fed turned suddenly 
and shot them. One had her jawbone 
broken, the second her arm pierced, and 
the third was struck in the breast. 
They were all serious wounds which 
kept them in bed. While I was still 
in the ward, the two men of this family 
came back from Flanders on leave, only 
to find no one at home. The neighbors 
directed them to the hospital. I hate to 
think how those men looked when they 
learned why their women wore band- 
ages. They told me that during Easter 
Week the Germans put up opposite the 
trenches of the Irish Brigade a placard 
that read: 

"The military are shooting dozvn your 
wives and children in Dublin." 
173 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

But the Irish soldiers had not believed 
it, 

I asked them if it was true, as alleged, 
that in answer to the placard, the Irish 
Brigade had sung *'Rule, Britannia." 
They were indignant at the idea. They 
might be wearing khaki, they said, but 
they never yet had sung ''Rule, Britan- 
nia." When the day came for them to 
return to the front, the father wanted to 
desert, dangerous as that would be, 
while the son was eager to go back to the 
trenches. 

"This time," he said to me, "we'll not 
be killing Germans !" 

When rumors came later of a mutiny 
in the Irish regiment, I wondered to my- 
self if these two men were at the bottom 
of it. 

Stories of atrocities poured into our 
ears when the Germans invaded Bel- 
174 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

gium. Now we had to hear them from 
our own people, and now we had to 
beheve them. They were stories as 
cruel as any heard since the days of the 
Island Magee massacre. 

In the House of Commons shortly 
after the rising, the cabinet was ques- 
tioned if it were true that the body of a (/ 
boy in the uniform of the Irish Volun- 
teers had been unearthed in the grounds 
of Trinity College, with the marks of 
twenty bayonet wounds upon him. 

"No," was the response, ''there were 
not twenty; there were only nineteen"! 

The body in question was that of 
Gerald Keogh, one of a family passion- 
ately devoted to the cause of Irish free- 
dom. He had been sent to Kimmage 
to bring back fifty men. He went scout- 
ing ahead of them, just as I had done 
when I brought in the men from the 
Leeson Street bridge. As he was pass- 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ing Trinity College, held by the British, 
he was shot down and swiftly captured. 
It is generally understood he was asked 
for information, and that, upon his 
refusing to answer, the soldiers tried to 
force it from him by prodding him with 
their bayonets. I might add that the 
fifty men with him were not attacked as 
they went by. 

This boy's brother was also captured 
by British soldiers, who decided to hang 
him then and there. He begged them 
to shoot him, but they fastened a noose 
around his neck and led him to a lamp- 
post. Fortunately an officer came along 
at that moment and rescued him. Even 
children were not safe from being ter- 
rorized by the soldiers, as Mr. Dillon 
later brought out in the House of Com- 
mons. 

There also were murders in North 
King Street. Fourteen men who had 
176 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

nothing to do with the rising, were 
killed in their homes by British soldiers 
who buried them in their cellars, while 
others looted the houses. The house in 
Leinster Road was pillaged, and the sol- 
diers had the effrontery to sell the 
books, fine furniture, and paintings on 
the street in front of the dwelling. 

I had been in the hospital now about 
five weeks, and had been told I might 
go in a few days to visit friends in the 
city if I would promise to return every 
day to have my wounds dressed. Then 
one morning I was informed there was 
a "G-man," as we call government detec- 
tives, waiting down-stairs to see me. 
He had been coming every day to the 
hospital, it seems, to learn if I was yet 
strong enough to go to jail. Evidently 
he had decided that I was, for he told 
me I must accompany him to Bridewell 
Prison. 

177 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

When I went up to the ward to say 
good-by and get my things, I found the 
nurses terribly upset. You see, it 
brought the Irish question right home to 
that hospital. They went to him in a 
body and tried to beg me off, but he 
insisted on his rights, and away I went 
despite tears and protestations. 

This was the first time I had been out, 
so naturally I felt queer and weak. Nor 
was I pleased with my companion. He 
had a fat, self-satisfied face ; in fact, was 
not at all the handsome, keen-looking 
detective you see on the cover of a dime 
novel. Besides, he was too polite. He 
thought, I suppose, that this would be 
the best way to get me to answer the 
hundred and one questions he began to 
ask me. I told him I might answer 
questions about myself, but I certainly 
should not answer any concerning the 
countess or my other friends. 

178 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

This response kept him quiet for a 
block or two. Then he turned suddenly 
and asked me about two girls from Glas- 
gow who had come to Ireland at the 
same time that I did. I just walked 
along as though I had not heard a word, 
and so we proceeded in silence the rest 
of the way. 

When we entered the vestibule of the 
prison, an old official immediately began 
to catechize me. I refused to answer 
a single one of his questions, not even 
as to my name. Instead I pointed to 
the ''G-man." 

"Ask him," I said. "He knows all 
about me, and can tell you if he wants 
to." 

The detective's face grew red, but he 
did answer the old man's questions. It 
was very interesting to me to find that 
he knew who my parents were; that I 
had been born twelve miles from Glas- 
179 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

gow ; that I had gone to different schools 
which he named, and that I had attended 
the training college for teachers. He 
told just where I had been teaching, and 
how well known I was as a militant suf- 
fragette. But what he did not say was 
even more interesting. He never de- 
clared that I had been a combatant in 
the rising. I wondered inwardly if he 
thought I had been only a despatch- 
rider or a first-aid girl. I was exceed- 
ingly glad I had let him answer for 
me as, taking it for granted they knew 
all about me, I might have given myself 
away. 

The old man finally called the matron 
and told her to treat me well, as I was 
not a "drunk or disorderly" person, to 
which class this prison is given over, but 
a military ^ prisoner. Indeed she did 
treat me well. Since there was nothing 
on which to sit down, she kindly opened 
1 80 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

a cell and let me sit on the wooden plank 
they call a bed, and stare at the wooden 
head-board. I did not look forward 
much to such accommodations, with my 
wounds still painful. She talked to me, 
too, very sympathetically. Sometimes 
it was hard for us to hear each other, as 
there were many drunken men singing 
and cursing. Being drunk, they were 
able to forget that Ireland was under 
martial law, and cursed the British 
loudly or sang disrespectful songs. 

The detective had gone out, and those 
in the jail seemed waiting to hear from 
him before they picked out my perma- 
nent cell. After about two hours, he 
came back. From where I sat, I could 
see him bend over the old man and 
whisper to him. Then he walked over 
to me. 

"Come," he said, "we '11 go now." 

"Go where?" I asked. 
i8i 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

"To the hospital," he repUed, *'or any- 
where else you wish. You are free." 

The matron was as pleased as if she 
were a friend of mine. I was too 
amazed to know what to think. I told 
the detective, however, that as I did not 
know this part of Dublin, I could not 
find my way back to the hospital without 
his company. Off we went again, and 
he paid my carfare, for which I thanked 
him. 

In the sky overhead were aeroplanes 
that the British kept hovering over Dub- 
lin to impress the people. 

"Are those the little things with which 
you fight the Zeppelins?" I asked my 
detective. 

This remark hurt his feelings. He 
was not British, he informed me, but 
a good Redmondite. How embarrassed 
he was when I asked him if he liked 
arresting Irish who had shown their 
182 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

love of Ireland by being willing to die 
for her and, what sometimes seemed 
worse to me, going into an English 
prison for life. After that we did not 
talk any more until he said good-by to 
me at the hospital door. 

The nurses were not as surprised to 
see me back as I had expected them to 
be. They had known I was returning, 
for it was the head doctor who had tele- 
phoned the authorities at Dublin Castle 
to tell them, with a good deal of heat, 
that I was in no condition to begin a 
prison sentence. That must have been 
what the "G-man" had whispered to the 
old official at Bridewell Prison. 



183 



XII 

AFTER two weeks more, I left the 
hospital and went to stay with 
a friend in Dublin. It seemed very 
strange to me not to be going back to 
Surrey House. How everything had 
changed! As soon as I was strong 
enough, I went around to see where the 
fighting had destroyed whole streets. 
Dublin was scarred and, it seemed to 
me, very sick. I recalled momentarily 
that a teacher of mine had once said 
the name Dublin meant "the Black 
Pool." 

The building where I had first met 
Thomas McDonagh, the Volunteer 
headquarters, had a "to let" sign in its 
184 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

windows. Who would want to engage 
in business in a place where such high 
hopes had been blasted? 

Liberty Hall was a shell, empty of 
everything but memories. 

Around the post-office, all other build- 
ings had been leveled, but the great 
building stood there like a monument to 
Easter Week. 

The windows stared vacantly from 
the house on Leinster Road. Every- 
thing had been taken from it. The 
looters must have had a merry time. 
Hundreds of houses had been thus 
sacked, for the British soldiers had 
lived up to that Tommy whose words 
make Kipling's famous song: 

The sweatin' Tommies wonder as they spade 

the beggars under, 
Why lootin' should be entered as a crime ; 
So if my song you '11 hear, I will learn you 

plain and clear 

185 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

'Ow to pay yourself for fightin' overtime ; 

With the loot ! 

Bloomin' loot ! 
That 's the thing to make the boys git up and 
shoot ! 



It 's the same with dogs and men, 
If you 'd make 'em come again 
Clap 'em forward with a 
Loo-loo-lulu 
Loot! 

Against our soldiers, on the other 
hand, a great many of whom were very 
poor, there had not been a single 
accusation of looting. In the post- 
office, for instance, they ordered one of 
the captured British officers to guard 
the safe. In the streets where windows 
had been broken, they tried to keep the 
people from pillaging the shops. What- 
ever money our men found lying loose 
in the buildings they occupied was 
turned over to their superior officers. 
i86 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Again and again I myself had seen men 
of the Citizen Army, quite as poor as 
any British soldier, hand over money 
to Commandant Mallin. Had I only 
thought of it, I could have taken this 
with me when I was carried to the hos- 
pital. The cause would have been at 
least one hundred pounds richer. 

At the College of Surgeons we had 
destroyed nothing except a portrait of 
Queen Victoria. We took that down 
and made puttees out of it. We did not 
feel we were doing any wrong, for it 
was Queen Victoria who, in 1848, wrote 
to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium : 

"There are ample means of crushing 
the rebellion in Ireland, and I think it 
very likely to go off without any contest, 
which people (I think rightly) rather 
regret. The Irish should receive a good 
lesson or they will begin it again." 

From this quotation any one can see 

187 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

that the Queen looked upon the Irish 
as aliens, which, indeed, they are. 

We also were very careful of the 
museum and library at the College of 
Surgeons. Although the men did not 
have any covering and the nights were 
cold, they did not cut up the rugs and 
carpets, but doubled them and crept in 
between the folds in rows. 

About Jacob's Biscuit Factory, during 
Easter Week, even though it was a very 
dangerous spot, the employees had 
hovered, for fear their means of liveli- 
hood would be destroyed. But it was 
not. The machinery was left unin- 
jured, for we always remembered our 
own poor. 

At Guinness's brewery, where great 
quantities of stout were stored, none of 
it was touched. Most of our men are 
teetotalers, anyway. 

Some of the poor of Dublin had tried 
i88 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

to pillage at first, but it was a pathetic 
attempt. I saw one specimen of this on 
Easter Tuesday, while carrying a des- 
patch. There was a crowd of people 
about a shoe-shop. The windows had 
been smashed, and the poor wretches 
were clambering into the shop at great 
risk of cutting themselves. Once inside, 
despite all the outer excitement, they 
were taking the time to try on shoes! 
Many of them, one could see, had never 
had a pair of new shoes in their lives. 
Visitors to Dublin going through the 
poorer parts are always surprised at the 
number of children and young girls who 
walk about bare-footed in icy weather. 
It is in this way that their health is un- 
dermined. 

One day during the week after I left 

the hospital, I heard that a batch of 

prisoners was to be taken to England 

aboard a cattle-boat leaving the pier 

189 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

called North Wall. I went down at 
once to watch for them. It was a very 
\/et day, and the prisoners had been 
marched six miles from Richmond bar- 
racks through the pouring rain. But 
they were singing their rebel songs, just 
as if they had never been defeated and 
were not on their way to the unknown 
horrors of an English prison. 

The officer in charge seemed much 
excited, though he had five hundred 
soldiers to look after a hundred pris- 
oners. 

"For God's sake, close in, or we '11 be 
rushed!" he shouted to his men. Then 
the soldiers, with fixed bayonets, "closed 
in" upon the wet crowd of rebels, who 
actually seemed to feel the humor of it. 

I knew some of the boys, and walked 
in between the bayonets to shake hands 
with them and march a part of the way. 
190 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

They had heard I was dead, and looked 
at first as if they were seeing a ghost. 
One of them, a Httle, lame playwright of 
whom I had caught a glimpse at Bride- 
well, had told me at the time that he was 
writing a farce about the revolution to 
show its absurdity. He had had noth- 
ing to do with the rising, for it was his 
brother who had been with us at the 
College of Surgeons. There was not 
even a charge against him ; yet here he 
was, limping along in the rain and mud, 
but still cheerful. This chap gave me 
a bundle of clothes and a message for 
his mother, so I hunted her up the next 
morning. She did not know he had 
been deported, and was in despair, for 
she had left her little cottage in the 
country to be near her son in Dublin. 
When I visited her she was just back 
from market with fruit she had bought 
191 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

to take to him, as it was visiting day at 
the barracks. 

These are some of the things that 
made even quiet old mothers grow 
bitter. 



192 



XIII 

No one could leave Ireland for 
Scotland without a special permit 
from Dublin Castle. This permit was 
given only when one applied in person, 
so I decided to go after it. My friends 
were terrified; it was putting my head 
into the lion's mouth. But it was the 
only way, even though I might never 
come out of that building free. 

I took my arm out of the sling, hoping 
I should not have to raise it; for I 
could n't, nor can yet. For greater pre- 
caution, just before I reached Dublin 
Castle, I removed the republican colors 
I always wore, and put them in my 
pocket. 

I was taken to a room where a police 
193 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

official began to ask me questions. It 
was, I believe, my "loyal" Scotch accent 
that put them off guard, when I asked 
for a permit to go to Glasgow. At the 
hospital one of the nurses shook her 
head, following a long talk, and said: 

''Your opinions and your accent don't 
go together." 

I have often been told that I look more 
like a teacher of mathematics, which, 
indeed, I am, than like an Irish rebel, of 
which I am more proud. 

The officer first asked me my name. 
I confess that I gave it to him while 
wondering what his next words would 
be. He merely asked my address in 
Dublin, so I gave him the address of 
friends with whom I was staying. 
Would that disturb him, I wondered? 

"When did you come to Dublin?" he 
next asked. 

**Holy Thursday," I replied. 
194 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

'Then you 've been here during the 
rising?" 

"Yes," I said. 

In a tone which showed how deeply 
he had been moved by Easter Week, he 
added : 

"It 's been a terrible business!" 

To that I could feelingly agree. 

At length he gave me a permit, not 
one to leave Dublin, but merely to see 
the military authorities. Here was an- 
other ordeal. 

I went up to a soldier in the corridor 
and asked him where I should go. 

"What 's your name?" he asked. 

"It 's on this permit," I replied, hold- 
ing k out to him. 

But, as he seemed afraid to touch it, 
I told him my name, and he took me to 
the office where the military authorities 
were located. I shivered a little at the 
chance of his going in with me and tell- 
195 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ing them I was a rebel. But he left me 
at the door. 

To my relief, the questions put to me 
here were the same as before. I had 
only to tell the truth, and the polite 
officer handed over my pass. 

As soon as I was outside the castle I 
replaced my republican colors and went 
home to friends who really did not ex- 
pect to see me again. 

I did not go directly to Glasgow, how- 
ever, for I heard that the police were 
watching all incoming trains. Instead, 
I went to a little seaside resort to recu- 
perate. My sister, who had come over 
to Dublin to be with me after I left the 
hospital, went along, too. She was ter- 
rified when we got off the boat because 
police were watching the gangway. 
But nothing happened. My mother 
came to see me, and took it all splen- 
didly, though from the first I had given 
196 



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f" ^ *'^^^^4.^a.-<-^J4i!X^^ 




y/QA^OnLr<>^^ P^^CXAyO^cx^ 



THE PASS OUT OF IRELAND KoR WHICH THE AUTHOR, AT GREAT RISK., APPLIED IN PERSON AT DUBLIN CASTLE 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

her an anxious time of it. She is a good 
rebel. 

I was proud that I could tell my 
mother I had been mentioned three times 
for bravery in despatches sent to head- 
quarters. The third time was when I 
was wounded. Commandant Mallin 
had said then : 

"You '11 surely be given the republican 
cross." 

But the republic did not last long 
enough for that. I was given an Irish 
cross. This was the joint gift of the 
Cumman-na-mBan girls and the Irish 
Volunteers of Glasgow. They ar- 
ranged, as a surprise for me, a meeting 
with addresses and songs. Since I had 
no hint of it, I was out of Scotland on the 
day set. They had to repeat part of the 
ceremony when I came back. It all was 
meant to be very solemn, but somehow I 
felt strange and absurd to be getting a 
197 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

cross for bravery that had led to death 
or prison so many others. 

I had left Scotland very quietly to go 
to England and see some of our boys 
being held in Reading Jail without any 
charge against them. I had had a good 
talk with them, even though a guard 
stood near all the time. He was a pleas- 
ant-enough person, so we included him 
in our conversation, explaining the 
whole rising to him. The boys were in 
good spirits, too. They laughed when 
I told them I had always boasted I 
would never set foot in England. And 
here, on their account, I was not only in 
England, but in an English prison. 

We had very few Irish revolutionists 
in the Scotch prisons. Two hundred of 
them were brought, during August, to 
Barlinnie Prison, but they were allowed 
to stay only a short time. Far too much 
sympathy was expressed for them by 
198 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the Irish in Glasgow and by Scotch suf- 
fragettes, who made a point of going to 
visit them and taking them comforts. 
Presently they were removed to the 
camp at Frongoch, Wales, where sev- 
eral hundred others who had taken part 
in the rising were interned. As they 
marched through the streets of Glasgow, 
we could not help noticing how much 
larger and finer looking they appeared 
than the British soldiers guarding them. 
They were men from Galway, — men 
who for six long days had put up a 
memorable fight in that county, and with 
less than forty rifles had held six hun- 
dred square miles ! Three thousand of 
the rifles that went down with the Aud 
had been promised to Galway. Yet five 
hundred rnen had been ready to "go out" 
when they heard that, despite the coun- 
termanding order, Dublin forces were 
rebelling, no matter what the odds. 
199 



XIV 

WHEN I went back to Dublin in 
August, it was to find that 
almost every one on the streets was 
wearing republican colors. The feeling 
was bitter, too — so bitter that the Brit- 
ish soldiers had orders to go about in 
fives and sixes, but never singly. They 
were not allowed by their officers to 
leave the main thoroughfares, and had 
to be in barracks before dark, — that is, 
all except the patrol. The city was still 
under martial law, but it seemed to me 
the military authorities were the really 
nervous persons. Much of this bitter- 
ness came from the fact that people 
remembered how, after the war in 
South Africa which lasted three years 
200 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

instead of five days, only one man had 
been executed. After our rising sixteen 
men had been put to death. 

Everywhere I heard the opinion ex- 
pressed that if the revolution could have 
lasted a little longer, we would have been 
flooded with recruits. As it was, the 
rising had taken people completely by 
surprise. Before they could recover 
from that surprise, it was over, and its 
leaders were paying the penalty of death 
or imprisonment. One week is a short 
time for the general, tminformed mass 
of a dominated people to decide whether 
an outbreak of any sort is merely an 
impotent rebellion, or a real revolution 
with some promise of success. Besides, 
there have been so many isolated pro- 
tests in Ireland, doomed from the first 
to failure. 

There was evidence everywhere that 
the feeling of bitterness was not vague, 

20I 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

but the direct result of fully understand- 
ing what had happened. At a moving- 
picture performance of "The Great Be- 
trayal," I was surprised at the spirit of 
daring in the audience. The story was 
about one of those abortive nationalist 
revolts in Italy which preceded the revo- 
lution that made Italy free. The plot 
was parallel in so many respects to the 
Easter Week rising in Ireland that 
crowds flocked every day to see it. In 
the final picture, when the heroic leaders 
were shot in cold blood, men in the 
audience called out bitterly : 

'That's right, Colthurst! Keep it 
up!" 

Colthurst was the man who shot 
Sheehy Skeffington without trial on the 
second day of the rising. He had been 
promoted for his deeds of wanton 
cruelty, and only the fact that a royal 
commission was demanded by Skeffing- 

202 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

ton's widow and her friends, made it 
necessary to adjudge him insane as ex- 
cuse for his behavior, when that behav- 
ior was finally brought to light. 

It was on the occasion of my visit to 
the moving-pictures that I was annoyed 
by the knowledge that a detective was 
following me. His only disguise was to 
don Irish tweeds such as "Irish Ireland- 
ers" wear to stimulate home industry. 
He had been following me about Dublin 
ever since my arrival for my August 
visit. To this day I don't know why 
he did not arrest me, nor what he was 
waiting for me to do. But I decided 
now to give him the slip. In Glasgow 
I have had much practice jumping on 
cars going at full speed. The Dublin 
cars are much slower, so as a car passed 
me in the middle of the block, I suddenly 
leaped aboard, leaving my British friend 
standing agape with astonishment on 
203 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

the sidewalk. Doubtless he felt the 
time had come for me to carry out what- 
ever plot I had up my sleeve, and that 
he had been defeated in his purpose of 
looking on. I never saw him again. 

Even the children of Ireland have 
become republicans. There was a strike 
not long ago in Dublin schools because 
an order was issued by the authorities 
that school children should not wear 
republican colors. The day after the 
teachers made this announcement some 
few children obeyed the order, but they 
appeared in white dresses with green 
and orange ribbons in their hair or cap. 
When this, too, was forbidden, the 
pupils in one of the schools marched out 
in a body, and proceeded to other schools 
throughout the city to call out the pupils 
on strike. Any school that did not obey 
204 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

their summons promptly had its win- 
dows smashed. Finally, the police were 
called and marched against them. The 
children, as the sympathetic press put 
it, ''retreated in good order to Mount joy 
Square, where they took their stand and 
defended their position with what am- 
munition was at hand, namely, paving- 
stones." The end of it all was that the 
children won, and went back to school 
wearing as many badges or flags as they 
wished. 

Irish boys are showing their attitude, 
too, for at Padraic Pearse's school, con- 
ducted now by a brother of Thomas Mc- 
Donagh who taught there before the 
rising, there are several hundred boys 
on the waiting-list. The school never 
was as crowded before; the work that 
Pearse gave his life for, the inspiriting 
of Irish youth, is still going on. 
205 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Out on Leinster Road one day, I 
walked past that house where, not nine 
months before, I had met so many peo- 
ple of the republican movement. The 
house was empty, with that peculiar look 
of bereavement that some houses wear. 
It had been an embodiment of the Coun- 
tess Markievicz, and, now that she was 
gone, looked doomed. Where was she ? 
Over in England in Aylesbury Prison, 
but fortunately at work in the kitchen. 
I could not fancy her depressed beyond 
activity of some sort that in the end 
would be for Ireland's good. 

"A felon's cap 's the noblest crown an Irish 
head can wear." 

This was one of her favorite quota- 
tions, and I knew that in wearing the 
cap, her courage would not desert her. 
Her sister had seen her, and told me 
she was in good spirits; grateful that 
206 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

they had put her to work and not left 
her to inactivity or brooding thoughts. 
She had repeated what an old woman 
in Mount joy Prison had said to her : 

''Man never built a wall but God 
Almighty threw a gap in it !" 

Last November I paid another visit 
to Dublin. The bitterness had in- 
creased. 



207 



SONGS SUNG BY THE IRISH 

BEFORE AND AFTER THE 

EASTER RISING 



Here is one of my favorite songs as 
a child: 

O'DONNELL ABOO 
I 

Proudly the note of the trumpet is 

sounding, 
Loudly the war-cries arise on the gale; 
Fleetly the steed by Lough Swilly is 

bounding, 
To join the thick squadrons in Saim- 
ear's green vale. 
On, every mountaineer, 
Strangers to fight and fear! 
Rush to the standard of dauntless Red 
Hugh! 
Bonnaught and gallowglass. 
Throng from each mountain pass; 
Onward for Erin, O'Donnell Aboo! 

211 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 
II 

Princely O'Neill to our aid is advancing 
With many a chieftain and warrior clan. 
A thousand proud steeds in his van- 
guard are prancing 
'Neath borderers brave from the banks 
of the Bann. 
Many a heart shall quail 
Under its coat of mail ; 
Deeply the merciless foeman shall rue, 
When on his ear shall ring, 
Borne on the breezes' wing, 
Sir Connell's dread war-cry, ''O'Donnell 
Aboo!" 

Ill 

Wildly o'er Deamond the war-wolf is 

howling ! 
Fearless the eagle sweeps over the plain ! 
The fox in the streets of the city is 

prowling ! 

212 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

All, all who would scare them are ban- 
ished or slain ! 
Grasp every stalwart hand 
Hackbut and battle brand, 
Pay them all back the deep debt so long 
due! 
Norris and Clifford well 
Can of Sir Connell tell ; 
Onward to glory, ''O'Donnell Aboo !" 

IV 

Sacred the cause of Clan Connail's de- 
fending, 
The altars we kneel at, the homes of our 

sires. 
Ruthless the ruin the foe is extending. 
Midnight is red with the plunderers' 
fires. 
On with O'Donnell, then ! 
Fight the old fight again. 
Sons of Sir Connell, all valiant and true ; 
213 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Make the false Saxon feel 
Erin's avenging sieel ! 
Strike for your country, ''O'Donnell 
Aboo!" 



This was the other : 

THE JACKETS GREEN 

When I was a maiden fair and young 

On the pleasant banks of Lee, 

No bird that in the wild wood sang 

Was half so blythe and free; 

My heart ne'er beats with flying feet, 

Tho' Love sand me his queen. 

Till down the glen rode Saisfield's men 

And they wore their jackets green. 



'214 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 
II 

Young Donal sat on his gallant gray 

Like a king on a royal seat, 

And my heart leaped out on his regal 

way 
To worship at his feet ; 

Love, had you come in those colors 

dressed, 
And woo'd with a soldier's mien, 

1 'd have laid my head on your throbbing 

breast 
For the sake of the Irish green. 

Ill 

No hoarded wealth did my love own 
Save the good sword that he bore. 
But I loved him for himself alone 
And the colors bright he wore. 
For had he come in England's red 
To make me England's queen, 
I 'd rove the high green hills instead 
For the sake of the Irish green. 
215 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 
IV 

When William stormed with shot and 

shell 
At the walls of Garryowen, 
In the breach of death my Donal fell, 
And he sleeps near the treaty stone. 
That breach the foeman never crossed 
While he swung his broadsword keen, 
But I do not weep my darling lost, 
For he fell in his jacket green. 



216 



Here is a song that Madam liked very 
much. It was the most popular song of 
the Fenians : 

THE FELONS OF OUR LAND 

Fill up once more, we'll drink a toast 

To comrades far away, 
No nation upon earth can boast 

Of braver hearts than they ; 
And though they sleep in dungeons deep, 

Or flee, outlawed and banned. 
We love them yet, we can't forget 

The felons of our land. 

In boyhood's bloom and manhood's pride 

Foredoomed by alien laws. 

Some on the scafifold proudly died 

For Ireland's holy cause ; 
And, brother, say, shall we to-day 

Unmoved, like cowards stand, 
217 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

While traitors shame and foes defame 
The felons of our land? 

Some in the convict's dreary cell 

Have f omid a living tomb, 
And some, unknown, unfriended, fell 

Within the prison's gloom; 
But what care we, although it be 

Trod by a ruffian band? 
God bless the clay where rest to-day 

The felons of our land! 

Let cowards sneer and tyrants frown, 

Oh, little do we care ! 
The felon's cap 's the noblest crown 

An Irish head can wear ! 
And every Gael in Innisfail 

Who scorns the serf's vile brand, 
From Lee to Boyne would gladly join 

The felons of our land! 



218 



This is one of the songs of earHer 
risings which we all sang during the last 
one: 

WRAP THE GREEN FLAG 
'ROUND ME, BOYS 



Wrap the green flag 'round me, boys, 

To die 'twere far more sweet, 
With Erin's noble emblem, boys. 

To be my winding-sheet ; 
In life I longed to see it wave, 

And followed where it led, 
But now my eyes grow dim, my hand 

Would grasp its last bright shred. 

II 

Oh, I had hopes to meet you, boys. 
On many a well-fought field, 
219 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

When to our bright green banner, boys, 
The treacherous foe would yield ; 

But now, alas, I am denied 
My dearest earthly prayer, 

You '11 follow and you '11 meet the foe 
But I shall not be there. 

Ill 

But though my body molder, boys. 

My spirit will be free, 
And every comrade's honor, boys. 

Will still be dear to me ; 
And in the thick and bloody fight, 

Let not your courage lag. 
For I '11 be there, and hovering near 

Around the dear old flag ! 



220 



This song, written by the Countess 
Markiewicz to the tune of "The Young 
May Moon," had a great effect in Dub- 
lin, before the rising, in preventing the 
British from getting Irish recruits. It 
was sung everywhere and went thus : 

ANTI-RECRUITING SONG 
I 

The recruiters are raidin' old Dublin, 

boys, 
It 's them we '11 have to be troublin', 

boys. 
We '11 go to their meetin's and give 

them such greetin's. 
We '11 give them in German for fun, 

me boys ; 
'Tis the Germans they 're out to 

destroy, me boys, 

221 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Whose prosperity did so annoy, me 

boys, 
So let each Irish blade just stick to his 

trade 
And let Bull do his own dirty work, 
me boys. 

CHORUS 

For the Germans are winning the 

war, me boys, 
And England is feeling so sore, me 

boys. 
They 're passing conscription, the 

only prescription 
To make Englishmen go to the front, 

me boys. 

II 

Your boss, he won't go to the war, me 

boys, 
Hun bullets do him so annoy, me 

boys, 

222 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

So kindly he frees you, he does it to 
squeeze you 

To fight for his money anu him, me 
boys; 

They Ve hunger conscription in Ire- 
land, boys, 

You '11 starve till you 're tliin as a 
wire, me boys, 

You '11 get very thin, but you won't 
care a pin 

For you '11 know it 's for Ireland's 
sake, me boys. 

CHORUS 

For the English are losing the war, 

me boys. 
And they want us all killed before, me 

boys, 
The great German nation has sworn 

their damnation, 
And we '11 echo the curse with a will, 

me boys. 

223 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

III 

Then hurrah for the gallant old Dub- 
lin, boys, 
And if you would n't be muddlin', 

boys, 
Join a Volunteer corps, or, if that is a 

bore, 
The Citizen Army 's as good, me 

boys. 
Then hurrah for the Volunteers, me 

boys, 
Ireland in arms has no fears, me boys, 
And surely if we would see Ireland 

free, 
We '11 arm and we '11 drill for the 

Day, me boys. 

CHORUS 

For the Germans are going to win, me 

boys, 
And Ireland will have to butt in, me 

boys, 

224 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

From a Gael with a gun the Briton 

will run, 
And we '11 dance at the wake of the 

Empire, boys ! 



225 



Here is another satirical song, very 
popular just before and during the 
rising. The man who sung it, called 
Brian na Banba, was deported by the 
English after the rising: 

HARP OR LION? 

Neighbors, list and hear from me 
The wondrous news I 've read to-day, 
Ireland's love of liberty 
'Tis said is dead and passed away; 
Irish men have all grown wiser, 
Now they '11 heed no ill adviser. 
They despise their country's story, 
All they love is England's glory — 

Ha, ha, ha! 

Ha, ha, ha! 
All they love is England's glory. 

Ha, ha, ha! 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Now we all must grieve to know 
The deep offense our fathers gave, 
Meeting men with thrust and blow 
That came to rob them and enslave ; 
We should blush for their ill-doing, 
Give their errors no renewing, 
And, unlike those old transgressors. 
Never hurt our isle's oppressors — 

Ha, ha, ha! 

Ha, ha, ha! 
Never hurt our isle's oppressors, 

Ha, ha, ha! 



Only think of Hugh O'Neill, 
Thundering down in furious style, 
To assail with lead and steel 
The rovers from our sister isle; 
Chiefs and clans in all directions 
With their far and near connections, 
Warriors bold and swift uprisers, 
Rushing on their civilizers — 
227 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Ha, ha, ha! 
Ha, ha, ha! 
On their gracious civilizers, 
Ha, ha, ha! 

Surely, friends, the chance is great 
We '11 cast a cloud on Emmet's fame, 
Scoff at Tone and '98, 
And scorn Lord Edward's honored 

name ; 
Then, in quite a loyal manner. 
Clip and dye our old green banner. 
And, where hangs the harp of Brian, 
Place the mangy British lion — 

Ha, ha, ha! 

Ha, ha, ha! 
Place the mangy British lion. 

Ha, ha, ha! 

Surely, friends, it seems to me, 
England's self ere now should know, 
These are things she '11 never see, 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Let Ireland's star be high or low; 
That 's the truth, whoe'er denies it, 
Scouts it, flouts it, or decries it, 
Aids to spread a vile invention, 
Drawn from — where I will not mention ! 

Ha, ha, ha! 

Ha, ha, ha! 
From the place 'tis wrong to mention. 

Ha, ha, ha! 



229 



Another song, written to discourage 
recruiting for the EngUsh army in Ire- 
land, goes thus : 

EIGHT MILLIONS OF ENGLISH 

MEN 

I 

Good old Britain, rule the waves 

And gobble up all the land, 

Bring out the blacks and Indian 

braves 
To jigger the German band; 
Call up Australia and Canada, too, 
To shatter the Kaiser's den, 
We '11 stick to the looms while the 
howitzer booms. 
Eight millions of English men; 
Of mafficking, manly men; 
Of valiant, loyal men; 
230 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

We '11 capture the trade from here to 
Belgrade, 
Eight millions of English men. 

II 

There are plenty of fools in Ireland 

still, 
Just promise them something soon, 
A Union Jack, or a Home Rule Bill, 
Or a slice of the next new moon; 
And they '11 rush to the colors with 

wild hurroos, 
What price the War Lord then ? 
They '11 settle his hash, while we gobble 

his cash. 
Eight millions of English men ; 
Of beef-eating, bull-dog men; 
Of undersized, able men; 
We 're shy of the guns, but we '11 beggar 

the Huns, 
Eight millions of English men. 



231 



This is a song that includes the Irish 
leaders in Parliament in its satire on 
Irish "loyalty" to England: 

"Now," says Lady Aberdeen, 
"I 've a message from the Queen 
To the loyal hearts in Ireland here at 
home; 
She wants you all to gather socks, 
Plain as I, or decked with clocks. 
Just to prove the Irish loyal to the 
throne." 

CHORUS 

To Hell with the King, and God save 
Ireland, 
Get a sack and start the work to-day. 
Gather all the socks you meet, for the 
English Tommies' feet, 
232 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

When they 're running from the Ger- 
mans far away ! 

"When you Ve gathered all the socks, 

Send them on to Dr. Cox, 
Or to Redmond, or to Dillon, or myself, 

For the party on the floor 

Have agreed to look them o'er 
While the Home Rule Bill is resting on 
the shelf." 

CHORUS 

(Same as first stanza. The first line 
is a parody on the loyalist toast: 
"Here 's a health to the King, and 
God save Ireland!") 



233 



The Irish Citizen Army song was 
written by Jo Connolly, a young work- 
ingman, whose brother, Sean Connolly, 
was killed while leading the attack on 
Dublin Castle Easter Monday. Jo was 
the boy who cut loopholes in the roof 
of the College of Surgeons. He was 
deported to Wandsworth Prison, but 
after a few months was released. The 
song is sung to the tune which you know 
as "John Brown's Body": 

THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY 

I 

The Irish Citizen Army is the name of 

our wee band, 
With our marchin' and our drillin', I 'm 

sure you '11 call it grand ; 
234 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

And when we start our tightin' it will be 
for Ireland, 
And we "11 still keep marching on ! 

CHORUS 

Glory, glory to old Ireland! 
Glory, glory to our sireland ! 
Glory to the memory of those who 
fought and fell. 
And we '11 still keep marching on ! 

II 

We 've got guns and ammunition, we 
know how to use them well. 

And when we meet the Saxon, we will 
drive them all to Hell; 

We 've got to free our country and 
avenge all those who fell. 
So we still keep marching on ! 

CHORUS 

235 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 
III 

King George he is a coward, that no one 

can deny, 
When the Germans come to England, 

from there he '11 have to fly ; 
And if he comes to Ireland then, by God, 

he '11 have to die. 
And we '11 still go marching on ! 

CHORUS 

IV 

When the Germans come to free us, we 
will lend a helping hand. 

For we believe they 're just as good as 
any in the land, 

They 're bound to win our rights for us, 
let England go be damned! 
And we '11 still keep marching on ! 



536 



Here is the song of the Irish Vol- 
unteers, sung at all concerts held before 
the rising to get funds for rifles and 
ammunition. The Volunteers sang it 
whenever they marched, and I have been 
told the men in the rising of '67 also 
sang it. It was sung everywhere dur- 
ing the last rising. When we first with- 
drew to the College of Surgeons, Frank 
Robins sang it, and we all joined in the 
chorus : 

VOLUNTEER MARCHING 
SONG 

I '11 sing you a song, a soldier's song, 

With a cheering, rousing chorus, 
As round the blazing camp-fire we 
throng, 
The starry heavens o'er us; 
^17 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Impatient for the coming fight, 
And, as we watch the dawning light, 
Here in the silence of the night 
We '11 chant the soldier's song : 

CHORUS 

Soldiers are we whose lives are pledged 
to Ireland! 

Some have come from a land beyond the 
wave. 

Sworn to be free! No more our an- 
cient sireland 

Shall shelter the despot and the slave! 

To-night we '11 man the bearna booig- 
hill,^ 

In Erin's cause come woe or weal, 

'Mid cannon's roar or rifle's peal, 
We'll chant a soldier's song! 

'Mid valleys green and towering crag, 
Our fathers fought before us, 

1 Pronounced "barnabweel," which means, "gap of 
danger." 

238 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

And conquered 'neath the same old flag 

That 's proudly floating o'er us ; 
We 're children of a fighting race 
That never yet has known disgrace, 
And as we go our foe to face, 
We '11 chant a soldier's song : 

CHORUS 

Sons of the Gael, men of the Pale, 
The long-watched day is breaking! 

The serried ranks of Innisfail 
Have set the tyrant quaking! 

But now our camp-fire's burning low. 

See in the east a silver glow ! 

Out yonder waits the Saxon foe ! 
Then chant a soldier's song: 

CHORUS 



239 



The Fianna also had their songs. 
One of them, written by one of the 
Fianna boys, goes: 

Draw the sword ye Irish men ! 

The sword is mightier than the pen ! 
Fight the good old fight again 
To crush the old transgressor ! 

Break the bonds of slavery! 

O great God, it cannot be 

That Gaels could ever bend the knee 

To England, their oppressor! 



240 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Who taught them, and brought them 
The honor of to-day! 

The ancient foe hath boasted, — lo: 

That Irishmen were tame! 

They bought our souls with paltry doles, 

And told the world of slaves; 

That lie, men, will die, men. 

In Pearse and Plunkett's graves! 



243 



Here is a song written by a member of 
the Irish Republican army while he 
was confined in Richmond Barracks, 
Dublin, a month after the rising. It is 
sung to the tune of "The Mountains 
of Mourne": 

I 

In Dublin's fair city there 's sorrow to- 
day 

For the flower of her manhood who fell 
in the fray; 

Her youths and her maidens, her joy and 
her pride 

Have gone down in battle, in war's rag- 
ing tide. 

II 

They came forth to fight for a cause 
that was grand, 
244 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

When freedom and liberty called to their 

land; 
In the ardor of youth, in the spring of 

the year, 
They came without falter, they fought 

without fear. 

Ill 

Near the noon of that day on that April 

morn, 
Their tramp shook the street where 

young Emmet was born; 
They waved high their banner, white, 

orange and green, 
And it waved over freemen, the men of 

'i6! 

IV 

And- high o'er the Liffey it waved in the 

wind. 
Over hearts that were brave and the 

noblest of minds ; 
245 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

And they fought as of old, and they held 

the old town 
Till their banner, unsullied, in darkness 

went down. 

V 

In that Easter Week, dear old Dublin 

was freed, 
By the blood of her sons from Swords 

to the Sea, 
Oh, proudly again does she raise her old 

head 
When the nations lament and salute her 

bold dead ! 

VI 

O Irish Republic! O dream of our 

dreams ! 
Resplendent in vision thy bright beauty 

gleams ! 
Though fallen and crushed 'neath thy 

enemy's heel, 

246 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

Thy glory and beauty shine burnished 
Hke steel ! 

VII 

Not in vain was their death who for Ire- 
land died, 

And their deeds in our hearts in gold are 
inscribed ; 

The freeing of Ireland to us is their 
trust, 

And we can if we will it, we can if we 
must! 

VIII 

In Dublin's fair city there 's sorrow to- 
day, 

For the flower of her manhood who fell 
in the fray ; 

But in hearts that are true there is noth- 
ing of gloom, 

And Erin regenerate shall rise from the 
tomb! 

247 



The rising inspired not only verse, 
but music. One of the most popular 
songs in Ireland to-day is "Easter 
Week" ; the words by Francis Grenade, 
the music by Joseph Mary Crofts : 

Long, long the years thy chains have 
bound thee, Eire, 

Bitter the tears that sparkled in thy 
eyes, 

Sudden the cry of freedom thrills the 
city, 

Brave hearts beat high, thy children 
round thee rise; 

'Mid shot and shell, where flaming can- 
non thunder. 

From out that hell we hear their battle- 
cry: 

248 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

"Sinn Fein Amain!" Thy sons salute 

thee, Eire! 
See! Freedom's dawn is flushing in 

the skies ! 

Dark Rosaleen, thy trampled flag, we 

swear it. 
Shall lift its sheen triumphant in the 

sun! 
Thy galling chain, our gallant sword 

shall save her, 
Ended thy pain and weeping, dearest 

one! 
In plaintive strains our hearts shall 

mourn our heroes, 
Till once again thy banner waveth free, 
Close to thy breast, then guard them, 

gentle Eire, 
There shall they rest till time shall cease 

to be! 



i249 



If any proof were needed of the un- 
broken spirit of our men after the ris- 
ing, there could be none better than in 
the gay and challenging tone of many of 
the songs written and sung at the in- 
ternment camp at Frongoch, Wales. 
The British guards were particularly ir- 
ritated by one in which every verse 
ended with the line: 

"Sinn Feiners, Pro-Germans, alive, 
alive or 

But there was another that the guards 
not only tolerated but took to singing 
themselves, much to the amusement of 
our men. The reason they sang it was 
because the air was catchy and they had 
no means of knowing that the "N. D. 
250 



Doing My Bit for Ireland 

U." is the North DubHn Union or work- 
house. It was written by Jack Mc- 
Donagh, brother of Thomas McDon- 
agh, the poet, who signed the procla- 
mation of the repubHc and was shot for 
it. Here is the chorus: 

Come along and join the British Army, 
Show that you're not afraid, 

Put your name upon the roll of honor, 
In the DubHn "Pal's Brigade" ! 

They '11 send you out to France or 
Flanders, 
To show that you 're true blue. 

But when the war is o'er, 

They won't need you any more, 
So they'll shut you in the N.D.U. ! 



THE END 



251 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS # 



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